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The Royal Academy's current Antony Gormley exhibition is as grand as it is popular - and it's very popular indeed. Most weekend ticket slots were sold out well in advance. Yet it was never uncomfortably packed and there was plenty of space to move around, spend time with the works,. and to take photos. Even selfies. Which, with Gormley's work, seems almost de rigueur.
Lost Horizon I (2008)
I didn't go as far as the somewhat inebriated couple who were lying down beneath sculptures and being gently rebuked by security for posing while hugging them but I did break my usual protocol to include a couple of photographs of mine and my art companion Valia's fizzogs.
This chance to 'get involved' is, I think, one of things that has made Gormley such a popular artist for the times we live in. For the age of Instagram. But I don't think that's the only thing people like about him. Hopefully we're not quite that self-obsessed. Not yet anyway. I think people like the scale and the humanity of his work as much as they do the spectacle that surrounds it and though, to my mind, his sculptures work better in situ (think of Gateshead's Angel of the North or the one hundred figures of Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool) it must be said the curators at the RA have done a very good job of turning an exhibition into an experience.
Or even, at a push, an event! There's much more to see (and much more to do) than there is to read which makes the show quite different to many I'd seen at the Royal Academy over the years. It seems to me that's just how Gormley wants it. On entering the very first room a sign informs us that "the visitor is centre stage" and calls for "our physical and imaginative participation". Which is defeated slightly by the security instruction to not to touch, or hug, the works.
Gormley believes that art only really comes to life when an audience interacts with it. It seems he's of the school that believes a tree falling in a forest doesn't make a sound unless there's somebody there to hear it. To aid us in being with the art, in the hear and now, this is the only sign you'll encounter (though there is a booklet available) as you pass through twelve of the thirteen rooms (one is impassable, more of that later) that make up the exhibition.
Gormley believes that art only really comes to life when an audience interacts with it. It seems he's of the school that believes a tree falling in a forest doesn't make a sound unless there's somebody there to hear it. To aid us in being with the art, in the hear and now, this is the only sign you'll encounter (though there is a booklet available) as you pass through twelve of the thirteen rooms (one is impassable, more of that later) that make up the exhibition.
Slabworks (2019)
Slabworks (2019)
The idea, quite clearly, is to experience the art, to be with the art. Not to pontificate or read about the art and, I must admit, probably not to write a medium sized length blog about it!
At least I did that afterwards. At the time I did my very best to be present with the art. To observe it, to smile at it, to laugh with it, and, even, when necessary (thankfully rarely), to pooh-pooh it. The first couple of rooms 'Slabworks' and 'Early Works' acted as an hors d'ouevre to the heartier fare that Gormley would be serving up once our appetites had been whetted but they also demonstrated how Gormley has always been interested in the human body. Not necessarily as a living, breathing organism or for its beauty, sexuality, fallibility, and, ultimately, its disposable nature but as, what the artist terms, a "vessel for feeling".
He's been criticised in the past for basing his human sculptures on his own body but in response to that he's been very clear that he's doing that not because he's different but because he is very average. I say different not special because we're all special. Besides, all artists need to work with what they have at hand and if we don't even have free reign over our own bodies then what do we have?
Slabworks (2019)
Slabworks (2019)
Gormley's fourteen Slabworks sculptures don't necessarily look like people (I've even posed a real person next to one so you can see both the difference and the similarities in scale) but it doesn't take long to see that they are, in some way, deconstructed human figures. Created with extreme precision from hard edged steel slabs and laid out in poses ranging from the upright to the extremely relaxed, the Slabworks are representation simplified to levels just shy of crude.
These ur-people retain a sense of dignity and humanity despite being incapable of genuine emotion. Sometimes we dwarf them, sometimes they dwarf us. They speak to the human desire to see a meaning, and a reason, in everything and yet they are, by their very nature, quite literally as cold as polished steel.
The Slabworks were all made this year but the room containing 'Early Works' lived up to its name (for the most part - Mother's Pride V was dated 2019) by taking us back, in some instances, over four decades to Gormley's time as a post-graduate at Slade School of Fine Art at London's UCL. They show a quirkier side to the artist.
Not least in his use of apples and bread as materials to create with. They demonstrate Gormley's sense of humour and the small debt he owes (and acknowledges) to the Italian Arte Povera movement. Land Sea and Air I makes me think of hot cross buns, Mother's Pride V made me chortle with its falling (or somersaulting) figure cut from a grid of unappetising looking white sliced bread, and One Apple from 1982 made use of fifty-three lead cases to show the growth of an apple from petal fall to maturity.
Each contains the dried remains of the fresh apple which was moulded to make the form for its case. Exercise in Blood and Earth 2019, despite its title, dates back to 1979 and made me realise (ok, Valia pointed it out) just how rarely Gormley utilises colour in his work. The blood reds of this 'drawing' and others, and the actual blood that crops up later in the show, being the exceptions that prove the rule.
Each contains the dried remains of the fresh apple which was moulded to make the form for its case. Exercise in Blood and Earth 2019, despite its title, dates back to 1979 and made me realise (ok, Valia pointed it out) just how rarely Gormley utilises colour in his work. The blood reds of this 'drawing' and others, and the actual blood that crops up later in the show, being the exceptions that prove the rule.
Land Sea and Air I (1977-79)
Blanket Drawing V (1983)
Mother's Pride V (2019)
One Apple (1982)
Exercise Between Blood and Earth 2019 (1979-81)
I wondered why an artist so alive to the possibilities of feeling and experience should choose to use such a monochrome or, often, grey palette. I wondered but I got no answers and I was soon distracted by the enormity of Clearing VII. I even wondered how I'd negotiate the work to get to the next room. Which was obviously a very major reason for the work's size and inclusion in the RA show.
Gormley calls it a "drawing in space" and it's made from roughly eight kilometres of square section aluminium tube. It expands into all four walls, ceiling, and floor and it'd be close to impossible to pass through the room without touching at least some of it. The chin stroking verdict is that it challenges the notion of what is and isn't sculpture and asks questions about spatial boundaries and how they affect our understanding of things but the more fun task is passing through without getting tangled up in it. You're not allowed to go right through the middle so you have to go round.
Clearing VII (2019)
Clearing VII (2019)
Gormley's self-proclaimed 'bundle of nothing' was fun but I've had more difficulty beating down thorns and bracken during my TADS walks than I had clearing Clearing VII. The room that abuts this funfair diversion holds a human size man who looks as if he's been constructed of high end Jenga. Subject II (for that was the dude's name) looked a bit lonely compared to many of Gormley's sculptures as he had a room all to himself.
Without the company of his chums it seemed as if he came under more intense scrutiny than others and, somehow, that gave him something that came close to expression. Which is not something you could say for, in terms of allocation of space at least, the show's central exhibit - Matrix III!
Without the company of his chums it seemed as if he came under more intense scrutiny than others and, somehow, that gave him something that came close to expression. Which is not something you could say for, in terms of allocation of space at least, the show's central exhibit - Matrix III!
Subject II (2019)
Subject II (2019)
Matrix III (2019)
Matrix III (2019)
As much as I enjoyed getting up close and personal with Subject II, I also could not help but marvel at Matrix III's sheer size. This is when being a successful and rich artist really helps. It seems almost inconceivable that an up and coming artist would be given the space, the funds, or the wherewithal to create such a vast piece. That's how life is. We all know that. Those who have been given, or indeed earned, the huge privilege to occupy these cavernous saloons should both be thankful of the opportunity and grasp it with both hands.
To be fair to Gormley, it seems he's done both. Matrix III is a "vast cloud" made of 98% recycled steel mesh (normally used to reinforce concrete walls, you'll have seen it on the news - exposed in war zones) that hangs from the RA's ceiling. Twenty-one cages intersect to create an often opaque structure that has at its heart a void that Gormley, pretentiously, has called "the space of dreaming".
It's the equivalent to an average size bedroom in an average sized newly built European house (which Gormley, almost certainly, does not live in). Gormley has said of the work that it represents "the ghost of the environment we've all chosen to accept as our primary habitat" which seems to overlook the fact that most of us haven't necessarily chosen our exact habitat but had it chosen for us by financial and political circumstances.
Matrix III (2019)
Matrix III (2019)
Matrix III (2019)
Gormley doesn't come across as a political animal so I'll cut him some slack on that (like, he's reading this) but if I was making a political metaphor about Matrix III, I'd probably suggest that the network of fine wires that hold the entire thing up will surely, one day, come under so much stress from the weight of the structure that the whole thing will come crashing down on our heads.
At the exact opposite end of the scale to Matrix III is Co-ordinate VI. Co-ordinate VI consists of, quite simply, three highly tensioned steel bars that pass through several rooms of the exhibition doing very little apart from offering the viewer a chance of getting their head gently sliced off and ending up like one of those anaemic pieces of Mother's Pride bread.
Co-ordinate VI (2019)
Headway (1989)
Despite all the talk of making physical "the abstract notion of the horizontal" and "perceptual conundrums" it is, at best, a pleasantly amusing diversion. A more cynical viewer than I may even call it a waste of space and it seems even Gormley needs to show, after Co-ordinate VI, that he can both actually draw and properly fill his rooms from hereon in.
Gormley claims he draws everyday, that he views it as "meditative" and a "creative wellspring", and works like Headway show he's not short of talent when it comes to this more traditional form of creation. These aren't preparatory sketches for his larger sculptural works but pieces in their own right. But, for the most part, RA visitors were passing through this room at a fairly rapid clip because they could see that the next room contained one of Gormley's greatest hits. The clearly huggable Lost Horizon I.
Lost Horizon I (2008)
Lost Horizon I (2008)
Lost Horizon I (2008)
Lost Horizon I is one of the Gormley works that (nearly) everybody knows and there are iron casts of Gormley's body protruding from the floor, the walls, and, somehow, the ceiling everywhere you look. In an attempt to deny us the distant horizontal line we use to orientate ourselves, Gormley has attempted to, ever so gently, discombobulate us and to look at ourselves, our bodies and how they occupy space, as if we were no longer contained by them.
The fact we do this without even really thinking about it, while also taking in ideas about gravity and space, shows that Gormley works best when the concepts that underpin his work are lightly applied. The sheer amount of figures, and the iron casts they're made up of, may be pretty heavy but the concept is anything but.
Lost Horizon I (2008)
Body (1991/93)
Fruit (1991/93)
It's a fun room and, just a guess, I reckon it's the one that crops up most on Instagram. To the side of it two giant iron sculptures hang from the roof like a pair of distended testicles or an executive stress toy for giants. Body and Fruit actually belong to Gormley's 'Expansion Works' series, works made from poses the artist has struck mid-run, jumping, or falling before then "painstakingly" moulding them in plaster.
Body and Fruit saw Gormley adopt a foetal position to decide the shape of the work and though there are ideas to be had by pondering the rust on the sculpture's surface, the illusion of a gravitational pull, or even their quietly undulating nature, it was almost too tempting not to push them into each other or swing around on them.
It'd be great to see what Antony Gormley could do with a children's playground! Certainly a series of concrete works from the early nineties had the feel of the kind of playground I'd play in throughout my youth, long before the notion of 'soft play' had caught on. I recall swings, slides, roundabouts, and, if you were very lucky, seesaws and witches hats set against harsh concrete surfaces scattered in broken glass and fag butts.
Porno mags were normally hidden in the bushes too - but I digress. Pieces like Press and Flesh each contain a void in the form of a body. Feet, hands, and heads have left their imprints but they are no longer here. They're memento mori for those that love brutalism, memories of people that once were here but now are not, and, perhaps because of that, the most affecting of all to me was Flesh that took the form of a cross as if to act as a placeholder in both an artistic and a more traditional sense. It could easily have appeared during my three part series of Magnificent Seven graveyard walks earlier this year.
Body and Fruit saw Gormley adopt a foetal position to decide the shape of the work and though there are ideas to be had by pondering the rust on the sculpture's surface, the illusion of a gravitational pull, or even their quietly undulating nature, it was almost too tempting not to push them into each other or swing around on them.
It'd be great to see what Antony Gormley could do with a children's playground! Certainly a series of concrete works from the early nineties had the feel of the kind of playground I'd play in throughout my youth, long before the notion of 'soft play' had caught on. I recall swings, slides, roundabouts, and, if you were very lucky, seesaws and witches hats set against harsh concrete surfaces scattered in broken glass and fag butts.
Porno mags were normally hidden in the bushes too - but I digress. Pieces like Press and Flesh each contain a void in the form of a body. Feet, hands, and heads have left their imprints but they are no longer here. They're memento mori for those that love brutalism, memories of people that once were here but now are not, and, perhaps because of that, the most affecting of all to me was Flesh that took the form of a cross as if to act as a placeholder in both an artistic and a more traditional sense. It could easily have appeared during my three part series of Magnificent Seven graveyard walks earlier this year.
Press (1993)
Flesh (1990)
As if leaving this life and entering into the next dimension the following room consisted entirely of Gormley's recent Cave. Sculpture, it's claimed - quite correctly, on an architectural scale. You can choose to pass through a darkened passageway or to walk round it. I went through it but Valia bottled it (either that or she was concerned that I'd use the cover of darkness to attempt to goose her).
What you can't see when you're in the Cave (well, you can't see much but bear with me) is that, from above, the "jostling cuboid structures" reveal themselves to be shaped like a vast human body crouched on its side. Gormley holds much faith in the idea that awareness of our bodies is heightened by darkness or closing our eyes and I don't necessarily disagree with them on that but you only take about four to five footsteps in complete darkness before you reach the exposed, and lit, central room of the cave so it's not as if we get much time to really meditate upon how our bodies exist in this space.
Cave (2019)
Cave (2019)
Cave (2019)
It's a great idea and it's a fun exhibit but it highlights another problem that occurs when Gormley's work is moved to a gallery. Outside, exposed to the elements, the experience of Cave would be more disarming, more frightening, more beautiful, and, most likely, more meaningful in a number of different ways.
The same could be said of 2019's Host. A wonderfully helpful guide explained to us that Gormley had instructed the room should only be lit by natural light and as it was roughly 5pm in November there was very little, none, of that. Therefore, during our visit Host was lit by the lights in another room of drawings next door.
Which was a pity because I liked the concept behind it and I'm sure I'd have appreciated it more if I'd arrived an hour earlier! Gormley calls it an "invasion of the inside by the outside" and it's made up of an expanse of seawater and clay. You'd need wellies on to pass through the room without getting wet socks but, as it is, you're merely allowed to look in and admire the basic, primal elements enclosed within, and juxtaposed against, the ornate 18c gallery.
Home and the Underworld (1989)
Point III (1989)
Home (1990)
The drawings in the room next to Host feature roads leading to nowhere and people staring out to space as well as a work made of Gormley's own blood (1990's Home is no match for Marc Quinn's Self from the following year when it comes to body shock and horror). Sat next to the chance to contemplate the very materials that make up our environment it seems that, as the show comes to the end, Gormley has begun to travel, for a change, outside of his, or our, body to look at the wider world.
It seems, like most of us, he's worried about what he's seeing. Environmental concerns are the greatest concerns the planet has at the moment but, as the handy booklet tells me, Host may be about climate change and environmental degradation but it may also represent the ideal conditions for new life to form. It may prove to be that the human body Gormley had made his life's work will no longer be a relevant vessel let alone a vessel for feeling as we move towards the future.
It may just be an empty vessel, as devoid of feeling as one of Antony Gormley's cast iron sculptures and, without humans to consider it, the death of all humanity could be as unlamented as that of a tree that falls in a forest and is heard by nobody. When you leave the gallery spaces and exit via the courtyard of the Royal Academy, Antony Gormley has one last surprise for you.
1999's Iron Baby, lying defensively yet exposed on the cold paving, is based on a model of Gormley's then six day old daughter. It's made of iron, the material you can find at the very core of our planet, and like our planet the logical thing to do would be to look after it. But, instead, we, of course, stop to look at it, take a photo, and move on. The Iron Baby is just a sculpture and if it was to be destroyed it'd be a pity. All the real babies and all the real bodies that are destroyed on a day to day basis in the pursuit of profit aren't sculptures and their deaths are all individual tragedies. In making one body, his own, somehow universal it seems that Antony Gormley is making us consider not just how we fit in our bodies or how our bodies react to the world around them but what they can take and what they can give to the world they exist within. Our bodies are the tools we use to either destroy, or repair, the planet we live in but our minds are the offices in which the executive decisions are taken as to which of these options we'll choose. We better choose soon and we better choose wisely.
Host (2019)
Iron Baby (1999)
Thanks to Valia for sorting the tickets, coffee in Waterstones beforehand, a quick debrief in a Soho pub afterwards, and, most of all, for accompanying me and thanks to Antony Gormley for making me think.
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