Antony Gormley ‘Another Place’

I want to move on from looking at the Hyperrealist sculptors to one that also does life-size figure work based on reality, but his are rough-cast models of his own body – Antony Gormley.
One can’t help being impressed by the sheer bravado of the idea, let alone the scale, of Antony Gormley’s most famous artwork ‘Angel of the North’, the monolithic structure standing in Gateshead. Don’t tell anyone, but I am less impressed with some of his more recent projects that resemble industrial accidents in a metal scrapyard. I do however like and admire a lot of his projects but my favourites have been those employing those casts of his own body I mentioned above – two projects in particular come to mind – ‘Event Horizon’ – where figures were placed around the South Bank in London and later around parts of New York (see next blog posts), and ‘Another Place’. I think they are enigmatic, dramatic, and exciting - I love the Fellini-esque quality of the picture (below) of ballerinas interacting with the figures.
‘Another Place’ consists of 100 cast-iron figures, each one weighing 650 kilos, spread out along three kilometers of the foreshore and staring out to sea, situated at Crosby, Liverpool, stretching almost one kilometre out to sea. Contractors spent three weeks lifting the figures into place and driving them into the beach on the-metre-high foundation piles.
Now permanently erected on Crosby Beach, it was due to be moved to New York in November 2006, but there was a controversial proposal to retain the work at Crosby. It was stated in the local paper, the Crosby Herald, that they may stay for a decade, but at a meeting on 7 March 2007, Sefton Council accepted proposals that would allow the sculptures to be kept permanently at Crosby Beach.
The work is seen as a poetic response to the individual and universal sentiments associated with emigration - sadness at leaving, but the hope of a new future in another place.