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Biography of Antony Gormley

Babyhood

Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950 to a German language mother and Irish father. A wealthy family, Gormley's begetter endemic a pharmaceuticals company which was famously the outset to work with Alexander Fleming to commercially produce penicillin. Gormley grew upward in the family home his father had built in Hampstead Garden Suburb, where they had a chauffeur, melt and several household assistants to take care of them. Gormley has, all the same, hinted in interviews that his parents' strict, Catholic beliefs played out in harsh forms of subject. Despite this, Catholicism informed the spirituality of some of Gormley'south later pieces, as he explained in an interview, "If you are brought upward a Cosmic y'all may lose your Catholicism but the fact is information technology has marked you lot for life. And the demand to replace its belief system with something else becomes your life's piece of work."

Looking back, he likens the static, rigid bodies of his mature fine art to several childhood memories. One was the "enforced sleep" his parents imposed on him as a immature boy, instructing him to lie down in his bedroom at 3pm in the afternoon. As he remembers, "I was never tired enough to slumber, so I would lie there and tell myself I couldn't motility. And it was mixed with a certain kind of fear - somebody'due south coming and if I move they're going to impale me, then I'chiliad not going to move..." He also cites the "terrible claustrophobia" he suffered as a kid as a forerunner to his still, stiff bodies, especially after he was sent to a Cosmic boarding school, where tightly cornered bedclothes closed him in.

At Ampleforth, Yorkshire's Benedictine boarding school, Gormley quickly discovered a natural inclination towards the arts, with a item liking for carpentry and article of furniture making. He won various school fine art prizes, painted a mural in the schoolhouse grounds when he was just 13 and even sold a series of paintings to the monks who taught him, demonstrating the talent and cocky-assurance that would catapult him into the spotlight as an adult.

Early Training and Work

Although Gormley had his sights set on art school, his parents pushed him towards academia; he recalls their attitude towards pedagogy, "The well-nigh important matter was that you had to take a task and not be a burden either on your parents or the land." His outset degree was in archaeology, anthropology and history of art at Trinity Higher, Cambridge, begun in 1968. While in that location he met and befriended various prominent figures inside the arts including artists Michael Craig Martin and Barry Flannigan, as well every bit erstwhile Tate manager Nicholas Serota, who would give Gormley a major solo show at London's Whitechapel Gallery years later.

Gormley's involvement in making art continued throughout his degree as he establish paid work painting murals for university balls, nightclubs and private parties. Following his graduation in 1971, this work earned him enough to get travelling around Republic of india and Sri Lanka on the hippie trail for the next couple of years. While travelling, Gormley went on a spiritual quest, learning meditation and considering whether or not to become a Buddhist monk, just he eventually found his desire to be an artist was stronger. The huge number of drawings he made during this catamenia, documenting the people, animals and architecture around him were impressive plenty to earn him a funded place at fine art school.

Initially studying sculpture at London's Saint Martin's Schoolhouse of Art, Gormley's first figurative sculptures were based on the homeless people he had seen sleeping under blankets on the streets or railway platforms of India. He made casts of his friends' bodies while lying down under a blanket. Emphasising the importance of this stage in his artistic evolution he states firmly, "There's no question that they behave in seed everything that has happened since."

Moving on to Goldsmiths Academy, Gormley remembers finding a corking sense of humility, saying, "Goldsmiths caused me pain, trouble and great inspiration. I realised when I got to art school that I didn't have a inkling what I was doing. Irrespective of whether fine art tin can be taught, fine art schoolhouse is where you learn from everyone around you. I'd say it'southward essential for an artist." Afterwards graduating from Goldsmiths, Gormley went to study at the Slade Schoolhouse of Art, where he met his futurity married woman, the painter Vicken Parsons.

Mature Period

Gormley'due south breakthrough came in 1981 with Bed (1980-81), in which viii,640 slices of bread were stacked to create the size of a double bed, while Gormley ate out a section in the heart to match the proportions of his body. Nicholas Serota was the director of the Whitechapel Gallery at the time, and he chose to display Gormley's Bed in a two person show with British sculptor Tony Cragg.

Gormley so moved onto producing figurative sculptures, mainly in lead, which he would later abandon after discovering information technology was poisoning him. He first began making early body castings during this fourth dimension, using his ain body every bit a spiritual signifier for all people, especially when multiplied, as seen in works such as Three Means, and State, Sea and Air 2 (1982). Gormley's wife became his primary studio banana, helping him cover his entire body with plastic food wrap and plaster in a gruelling and lengthy procedure of creation. He remembers the unrelenting back up she gave him in achieving his dreams: "Right through those early days when information technology wasn't looking as if it was going to work out - my God, you know, we had three children...[and] Vicken quietly accepted whatsoever came along...did all the moulding, did the lion's share of the child rearing and never stopped working herself."

Even afterwards the Whitechapel prove's positive reception, Gormley was still struggling to get past, with a shabby studio in Peckham and few commercial sales. Taking on teaching work a few days a week at various art schools helped, particularly while he and his wife were raising a large family. Suffering the fiscal strains of producing body casts proved challenging for Gormley and he later admitted his collaborative and much-loved work Field (1989-2003), was born from this menses of struggle; sculpting from clay, and involving others in the process of making, seemed a more than affordable and egalitarian option.

In 1993 art dealer and gallerist Jay Jopling signed Gormley with his commercial White Cube Gallery, leading to a period of financial security. Gormley also received commissions to produce various public artworks throughout the 1990s. These were often equanimous of effigy groupings placed apart, yet in harmony with one another, opening upward meditations on the human human relationship with the natural world. These ideas prompted critical comparisons with land artists including Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria, although information technology was clear Gormley's power to bring the internal and external spaces that surround the human torso into his fine art set up him autonomously from his peers. In 1994, Gormley won the Turner Prize for his ongoing work with Field. Three years afterwards he was awarded an OBE for services to British sculpture.

Late Menstruum

Following his Turner Prize win Gormley was deputed to create The Angel of the Due north, begun in 1994 and completed four years later. As U.k.'s largest, and perhaps most famous public artwork, information technology stands at the site of a disused collier and has become a powerful symbol of stability and endurance. On a recent visit to the site he observed, "... people are spreading ashes, leaving tokens for lost loved ones ... It's articulate that the piece of work is doing something that people need to be done."

With his three children grown upward and pursuing careers inside the arts, Gormley now has several large, factory style studios in England, including one in northward London nigh Kings Cross designed by David Chipperfield, and one in Hexham, Northumberland. Both of these employ multiple assistants to help keep up with the influx of commissions and exhibitions he receives. Gormley has institute distancing himself from the process of making gives him greater opportunity to contemplate the conceptual aspects of his do, as he explains, "I used to get to bed exhausted from chirapsia lead and mixing plaster. Now that farthermost concrete exertion of making sculpture is shared with my assistants; mayhap that allows me to meet the work more ruthlessly. When you've invested an enormous amount of concrete and emotional energy in a piece of work, it can be difficult to judge information technology objectively. I think I'chiliad in a better position to do it now, and it'southward a huge pleasure and privilege to be surrounded past such aggressive, sensitive, intelligent people."

Recent projects by Gormley accept become more than imperceptible with figures made from delicate tangles of wire or geometric blocks that slot into i another similar a puzzle. He has also embraced new technology and in early 2019, he collaborated with astrophysicist Priyamvada Natarajan and Astute Art to create Lunatick (2019), a virtual reality experience that allows viewers to wing over the surface of the moon. Both he and his wife continue to pursue their contained practices, although he has spoken of the impact she has had on his career, saying, "I couldn't have done what I have washed without Vicken'southward help. My lover, muse, assistant - she is the maker of my life, actually."

The Legacy of Antony Gormley

Given the introspective, meditative quality of his art, Gormley has tended to be a somewhat lone figure who has not been associated with any one specific art motility. He rose to prominence, notwithstanding, during a vibrant time every bit the Young British Artists (YBAs) brought the British art scene to international attending in the 1990s. Although the YBAs are most prominently remembered for their shock tactics, many also emphasized their own bodies in their work, using them as universal signifiers for the human being feel and this overlaps with the concrete immersion and interactivity of Gormley'due south exercise. This can be seen in Sarah Lucas' 'laddish' self-portraits and bodily sculptures, and in Tracey Emin's brutally honest cocky-exposure through printmaking and tapestry. Gormley's ability to combine a Minimalist language with an awareness of the torso too connects him to various Post-Minimalist artists including Rachel Whiteread and Mona Hatoum, who accept as well sought ways of bringing psychological tension and traces of homo presence into geometric arrangements.

Glasgow Schoolhouse of Art's Environmental Art course, established by David Harding in 1985 besides helped to promote British sculptural practices and many graduates have extended ideas first explored by Gormley. Nathan Coley's large-calibration public artworks, for instance, explore the ways nosotros react to our surroundings, with loaded phrases that invite deeper contemplation nigh our place in the world, connecting with the spiritual strand of Gormley's fine art. Similarly, Martin Boyce's geometric, angular sculptures reference the contemporary industrial surroundings, while opening information technology out into an imaginative, magical realm, recalling the play betwixt gritty materiality and Buddhist thought in Gormley's public sculptures.

Many of Gormley'due south big-scale public fine art installations have become extremely well-known and iconic symbols of towns or regions, with local people actively identifying the works with the locations in which they've been placed. The virtually famous of these is The Angel of the North, just other examples include Another Place at Crosby Beach, Merseyside and half-dozen TIMES (2010), a series of sculptures running along the Waters of Leith in Edinburgh.