Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley OBE RA (born 30 August 1950) is an English sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in Gateshead commissioned in 1995 and erected in February 1998, and Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool.
Almost all of his work takes the human body as its subject, with his own body used in many works as the basis for metal casts.
Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live." Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside." His work attempts to treat the body not as an object but a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical - a trace of a real event of a real body in time.
One & Other The Project
Weblink: www.oneandother.co.uk/
Dates:
06 Jul - 14 Oct 2009
Address:
Trafalgar Square, London, WC1. UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7983 4100
Sculptor Antony Gormley needs your help to create an astonishing living monument. He is asking the people of the UK to occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. They will become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity.
24 hours a day every hour, for 100 days without a break, a different person will make the Plinth their own. If you're selected, you can use your time on the plinth as you like. One & Other is open to anyone and everyone from any corner of the UK. As long as you're 16 or over and are living or staying in the UK, you can apply to be part of this unforgettable artistic experiment.
Charlie Brooker described this as a bit like giving the crazy people who dress up for the London Marathon a platform to do their stuff. I agree, but it's all fun and not as pretentious as it may have been intended.
