Series of Sculptures by Antony Gormley

I’d like to start my content for the week with the fantastic work of English sculptor Antony Gormley who has been working in the field now for almost 40 years. Browsing over his personal website you can just see the dedication he has for his craft, with such an expansive collection of sculptures I was really spoilt for choice. As you can see in the imagery I’ve brought across below Antony is quite consumed with the idea of recreating the human form. Engineering this from an industrial stance he typically creates eloquent silhouettes with layer upon layer of linear shapes. Not surprisingly his creations have traveled the world over in both exhibitions and private collections, he’s featured work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, San IIdefonso (Mexico City) and the National Museum of Modern Chinese History in Beijing to name a few. In fact one of the most iconic and coveted sculptures in England in modern times was created by Antony: The Angel of the North which is located in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear.

Now we’ve provided a little context to the designer/sculptor I’d like to return to the collection we have here which seems to have been somewhat of an ongoing project for Antony throughout his career. These intriguing human like creations are always being revisited and redeveloped by the artist with either a new material or style of line\shape, so really the possibilities are almost endless. I couldn’t find any documentation on his website of these being built but I’d love to learn more about the process and hear how he generates the ideas for each individual piece. I’ve read elsewhere that often the shape of his own body is used in many works as the basis for a metal cast, which is quite a nice personal touch I felt, I can’t imagine many sculptors take this type of approach.

Gormley isn’t an artist that confines himself to one material however, the best example of this is perhaps the work he completed for the 2006 Sydney Biennale: an international festival of contemporary art, in which he created an installation of over one hundred and eighty thousand small clay figurines out of 100 tons of red clay. Visually this must have been quite the spectacle, I’d love to see this series all together in one space, to be able to walk around each and compare it against its neighbour would be incredible. I know it’s not the same as experiencing it up close and personal but I’d really urge you to go explore further into the artists work over on his webpage if you enjoy what we have here. Not only will you see countless variations of the human form like we have here, there is a great number of abstract creations that have no ties to the world as we recongnise it. Enjoy!

www.antonygormley.grolar.co.uk

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