Antony Gorm­ley
Atax­ia

Over the last 25 years Antony Gorm­ley has tak­en a con­cep­tu­al approach to the human image in sculp­ture through a rad­i­cal inves­ti­ga­tion of the body as a place of mem­o­ry and trans­for­ma­tion, using his own body as sub­ject, tool and material.

The Block Works use a mount­ing can­non of 6 sizes of steel blocks and the absolute geom­e­try of archi­tec­ture to evoke the inter­nal state of the body beneath the skin. Each block has a unique posi­tion in the com­po­si­tion of tight­ly packed body forms that evoke a lived moment of inter­nal ten­sion which acti­vate the room in which they are placed.

The sculp­tures in this exhi­bi­tion depart from the often sym­met­ri­cal and hier­at­ic bod­ies at rest that have char­ac­terised Gorm­ley’s work to date. The forms twist, turn or fold about their own axes and in spite of the sharp mate­r­i­al clar­i­ty of the steel blocks, betray a sense of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and exposure.