Last week, what felt like nearly everyone in the art community of Somerset arrived at Barrington Court for an afternoon with Antony Gormely. There was little in the way of advertising about this event so it was surprising at how quickly the power of ‘word-of-mouth’ led to an audience, I’d estimate, of 200-300 people attending the hour talk and presentation by the famous artist in a marquee in the scenic grounds of Barrington Court last Tuesday 17th July. Currently on show (and the reason for his visit) in the manor house at Barrington is one of Gormley’s early works, ‘Field for the British Isles’.
By arriving at Barrington dead on time, 3.45pm that Tuesday, we were somehow actually late as when we came to the marquee at 3.44 the place was entirely full! Everyone else, it seemed must have got there incredibly early. No matter, we opted to stand at the back instead of sitting so we had a ‘fairly’ decent view, or so we thought, until the slideshow started…As it turned out it actually paid to be ‘late’ as our standing at the back of the marquee and well-timed bobbing up and down choreography to see each slide proved to be too distracting for Gormley and he invited three of us to take up the three free seats in the front row! Whoop! Now we were out of the way, the presentation could begin properly. Gormley discussed several pieces of work in his career, from the figurative cast bronze sculptures made from moulds of his own body to his more abstract works such as the fog piece, ‘Blind Light’. I think what I initially noted as being interesting was that I had always seen Gormley as a ‘sculptor’ and hearing him talk about any of his work, the thing that seemed most crucial in all of them was the context, location or space that these sculptures were in. Whether it was the gallery or the beach the important factor was space. This makes sense as whilst all of his work is about the body it is important to remember that we ‘know’ our body in relation in context to the space it inhabits, or as Gormley put it, ‘the body as a place to live’. The body is both a ‘place to live’ and a place which also lives within a bigger place, ‘the body inhabits architecture’. Sorry, I have been reading a lot of Heidegger recently, and the idea of existing, as in ‘to dwell’ as Heidegger puts it, seems to have a strong resemblance to some of what Gormley was talking about. In this way I began to see him less as a sculptor and more of an installation artist. The labelling might not be too important as they are often one and the same but I found the shift in my thinking about his work to be interesting. Gormley talked a lot about the ‘experience’ the audience had viewing the work, as he said, ‘experience over representation’ and how it seemed that he felt that the interaction, and sometimes pilgrimage to see his work (namely the figures that appear like mirages on Lake Ballard in Australia) is as much part of the work as the sculptures themselves. The reason for this, is because by making work about ‘the body’ and forcing the audience to interact with that work, it makes them think and engage with their own bodies with that space/in relation to that sculpture. For me, the work that I think best conveys this out of all the pieces Gormley showed us in his presentation were the more abstract pieces where the recognisable human figure wasn’t present instead in its place, a box with four holes in it, or a room full of fog, or a gallery space inhabited by a vortex of wire spiralling around seemed to place the viewer in the work more, for me, than the figurative stuff. It also de-clouded the somewhat cynical viewpoint that Gormley is an artist obsessed with his own image, clearly not true, when you see his other work. Besides, if you are making work about the body then surely there is no place better, than starting ‘close-to-home’ and using yourself?
