I am interested in the body because it is the place where emotions are most directly registered. When you feel frightened, when you feel excited, happy, depressed, somehow the body registers it (Antony Gormley)
The impossible thing that I'm trying to do is accept that we live in the world of the visible but make it unsatisfactory enough that behind the visible is some other kind of potential that does not exist in the sculpture but exists in you the viewer (Antony Gormley)
The body is put together from these pieces of mould taken at a particular time. That time has been fragmented, broken apart and then remade, healed in some way (Antony Gormley)
Antony Gormley’s work has long fascinated me. His use of his own body in his art works, because it is practical and available, makes sense. His bodies/sculptures are scattered around the country. So it was with much delight that I discovered this one is Birmingham. It is called Iron: Man, and was meant to pay tribute to the traditional skills of the ‘Black Country’.
Seeing this work has inspired me to revisit the documentation of his art, which speaks of bodily sensation and memory and inhabiting a Space. Gormley’s work is often controversial, but is loaded with thought and intellect.
I enjoy the tension he creates in his bodies: leaning or suspending them, or placing them in the ever-changing waves on the beach. His work provokes thought.
I have ideas in my head of creating clay torsos. But after being confronted with Gormley’s work again, I shall give each torso serious thought and a narrative before I commence working. I shall consider Time, creating, breaking down, fragmenting, re-creating; healing. Each work needs to go on a journey before it reaches completion. Documenting this journey will become part of the journey. The viewer needs to take over the journey and become part of its continuation.
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