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Antony Gormley's terracotta
army to invade Earl Lu Gallery
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ABOUT ANTONY GORMLEY
Born in London in 1950, Antony Gormley was educated
at Trinity College, Cambridge. Between 1971 and 1974 he travelled through the
Middle East, studying Buddhist meditation in India and Sri Lanka. In 1974, he
studied at the Central School of Art, London, going on to Goldsmith's School of Art
(1975-77) and the Slade School (1977-79).
Gormley mounted his first one-person exhibition in
1981, at the Serpentine Gallery and the Whitechapel Gallery, London. His first
one-person exhibition in the United States was at the Salvatore Ala Gallery, New York City, in
1984. He exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Prospect 86 exhibition, Frankfurt,
in 1986.
In 1991, Gormley departed from his technique of
using his own body as a mould for sculptures and displayed his first
Field installation, consisting of 35,000 hand-sized
terracotta figures made with a family of
professional brickmakers, the Texca family, in
Cholula, Mexico. Similar works include
Field for the British Isles
(1993), where
thousands of crudely-shaped clay figures, grouped in
a mass and all staring towards the viewer, were put together by a community of families
in St Helens, Merseyside, under Gormley's direction. Looking at
Field installations produces different emotions in
the
viewer, from affection to aversion, but most critics
concede that these masses of odd little figures have a strange, even mesmerising
power.
Gormley's most famous artwork, however, is probably
the Angel of the North,
an enormous sculpture standing on the site of an old
coal mine, towering over the A1 road, near Gateshead, Tyne & Wear, England. The sculpture
stands 65 feet high and has a Jumbo jet-sized wing span of 169 feet. It weighs
approximately 100 tonnes and can be seen from miles away. Here, as in most Gormley
artworks, the modelling was originally done directly from Gormley's own bodycast. This is
Gormley's hallmark, and for him the use of the body has mystical overtones in all his
work.
He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994 and the
South Bank prize in 1999.
Background on
Field
1989 Field I
and Field II
Consisted of small clay figures created by Gormley
and arranged in a pattern on a gallery floor, not filling the entire space and
are arranged densely at the centre and increasingly less densely towards the
periphery.
1991 American
Field
42,000 figures, created by a family of brick makers
in San Matias, Mexico. First shown in Salvatore Ala Gallery in New York and
Subsequently in Fort Worth, Mexico City, San Diego, Washington and
Montreal
1992
Amazonian
Field (made in Porto Velho, Brazil)
1993 European
Field (created in Sweden)
1993
Field for
the British Isles
35,000 figures. First exhibited in Tate Gallery
Liverpool
2003 Asian
Field
190,000 figures created by people from Xiangshan
village, Guangzhou, China.
Asian
Field is the first major event of
Think UK, a campaign running
throughout 2003 presenting a series of high profile
arts events designed to focus attention on British originality, creativity
and innovation.
ABOUT THE INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS SINGAPORE
Established by LASALLE-SIA College of the Arts, the
Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore is devoted to the exhibition and research
of international and Asian contemporary art. Through its exhibition programme
at its facility, Earl Lu Gallery, as well as its extensive programme of publications,
conference and research activities, it aims to further the discourse on contemporary art in
Asia.
Content
Contributor:
www.lasallesia.edu.sg
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FrontPage Edition 11 Oct
2005
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