The Figure in Space

This lesson we were looking at the sculptural projects of artist Antony Gormley in order to explore the idea of the figure in space. This concept has greatly shaped Gormley's body of artwork over the past decade, yet he has played with the concept of the 3D figure in a wide variety of ways, varying medium and landscape in order to change the affect of the artwork each time.

I was particularly drawn to Gormely's 2007 project 'Event Horizon', which involved several dozen copper figures placed on rooftops in London. Although I did not attend the accompanying exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, I clearly remember the event as I passed several of the figures on my way into the West End by bus on several occasions. To me, Gormley's figures seemed to be elevated above the status of an inanimate statue; while they were rigidly fixed in place and their bodies created a solid silhouette against the backdrop of traffic and urban life, from afar they appeared as ordinary pedestrians, perhaps pausing to contemplate the landscape. This process of observation was also mirrored by bystanders, who were stopped in their tracks on noticing a figure on the horizon. Gormley's representation of figures in an urban space was successful due to the ease with which the figures were integrated and became part of the space. Yet at the same time, their curved humanly shape stood in stark contrast with their urban, artificial surroundings.

Photograph from 'Event Horizon', 2007

Photograph from 'Event Horizon', 2007. And that's my bus in the right hand corner!

As a class, we also looked at Gormley's work 'Another Place'. This installation, created in 1997, features a hundred solid cast iron body frames placed along the coast line near Liverpool. While this installation once again depicts Gormley's fascination with the human figure and its relationship to the landscape, the low lying, flat environment of the beach provides a totally different experience of the human form and its silhouette to the figures in 'Event Horizon'.

As Gormely said 'the idea was to test time and tide, stillness and movement, and somehow engage with the daily life of the beach'.  In this sense, Gormley endeavoured to again animate the human form and show it as changing and evolving in response to its surrounding environment. However, for this installation, the tide and the light on the coast is also intended as a central part of the experience of the figures in the landscape. In fact, more than the figures placed in an urban environment, the cast iron figures in the sea have visibly changed over time; they have been eroded by sea water and a thick layer of cockles has transmuted and changed the shape of their bodies.

Photograph of 'Another Place' when the tide is in

Photograph of the same installation when the tide is out 

In response to Antony Gormley's 'Another Place', I endeavoured to recreated the lonely, isolated affect of solitary figures in a wide open space. While Gormely ignited my interest in the silhouette of the human figure, I was also keen to explore how I could convey a human form through using different materials. The vast majority of his works which focus specifically on the human figure in space are sculptural works, and like the projects above, Gormely frequently uses solid materials such as steel or copper in order to create a definitively human shape. However, to cut costs and to shift the focus of my project, I used a couple of tea towels strung up on a washing line and worked them into human forms using elastic bands. I've posted the results below:

Initially, I did not think this experiment was particularly successful - the tea towels  failed to evoke the human figure in any tangible form and just look like pieces of fabric tied together with elastic bands! But then I began taking photos of the tea towels from different angles and this dramatically improved the visual similarity between Gormley's work.