Antony Gormley has over the past 30 years revitalised the human form in sculpture through a radical investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation. “I am interested in the body”, he says, “because it is the place where emotions are most directly registered. When you feel frightened, when you feel excited, happy, depressed somehow the body registers it.”
Gormley has explored the relationship between the individual and the community in large-scale installations such as Allotment (1995), Domain Field (2003), Another Place (1997) and Inside Australia (2003). Angel of the North (1998), one of his most celebrated works, is a landmark in contemporary British sculpture. Field (1991), an installation of hundreds or thousands of small clay figures sculpted by the local population, has been enacted in various locations throughout the world, involving local communities across four continents. “Sculpture is an act of faith in life, in its continuity”, comments Gormley. “We all do things like this; we have a stone that we keep in our pocket which is a guarantee of life's continuity, and it has to do with hoping that things will work out, that life will be okay.” More recently, the engagement of the public in active participation has continued beyond the gallery space in Clay and the Collective Body (2009) and the acclaimed One & Other (2009) commission in London’s Trafalgar Square.
Antony Gormley was born in 1950 in London, England, where he lives and works. He has participated in major group exhibitions including the International Sculpture Biennale of Carrara (2008 and 2010), the Sydney Biennale (2006), Documenta VIII, Kassel,Germany (1987) the Venice Biennale (1982 and 1986). Solo exhibitions include State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersberg (2011) Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz (2010) Artium, Valencia (2009) Kunsthall Rotterdam, Musée d’Art Moderne De Saint-Etienne Metropole and MARCO, Monterrey (2008), Hayward Gallery, London (2007) MADRE, Naples (2006), Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2004), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (2003), and the National History Museum, Beijing, China (2003). Major public works also include Exposure (2010), Lelystand and Habitat (2010), Anchorage. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994 and made an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1997. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and has been a Royal Academician since 2003.