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Uploaded 22/1/03
Antony Gormley: Field for the British Isles
British Museum, London, 15 November 2002-26 January 2003
Antony Gormley's 'Field for the British Isles'
is one of the most riveting projects by a British sculptor. Made
up of 40,000 small terracotta figures, it is now on show at the
British Museum.
Devoted to its magnificent collection of artefacts
from all cultures, the British Museum enables a dialogue between
numerous and varied manifestations of the human form and Gormley's
original and moving presentation. Instead of simply viewing the
work, the figures stare back at the viewer. Curator Colin Renfrew
states,
Here, for the first time, 'Field 'is shown in the midst of these
other creations in what may be claimed as the greatest collection
in existence of artefacts from the various cultures of the world.
'Field' reaches out to its cousins around the Museum and invites
you, the visitor, to go and locate the earliest sculptures from
the prehistoric Near east or the clay figurines from prehispanic
Mexico, then return to face the intense gaze of the 40,000 or
so small terracotta figures which confront you.
Antony Gormley (b.1950) is best known for his vast sculpture 'Angel
of the North' (1998), near Gateshead. Departing from traditional
sculptural materials such as marble or bronze, he has used a plaster
cast of his own body - standing, lying - to produce a body-case
covered in lead or cast in iron. His works 'explore what it is to
have a mind, what it is to occupy our bodily place in the world
and through experience to become a being of full consciousness'.
Each of the 40,000 figures in the 'Field for the British Isles'
were created in St Helen's, Merseyside in 1993. Earlier versions
were made in Mexico (1990), Porto Velho in the Amazon Basin, and
in Sweden. In each case, the figures were created in collaboration
between Gormley and the local community. They were kiln-fired in
brickworks and subsequently displayed en masse. The respective local
communities were made up of local children and their extended families.
Each person was given a small ball of clay with which they shaped
a standing figure with two eyes. As many as 200 figures could be
made by each person in a day. Gormley describes the process,
Each one of these works comes from a lived moment. It is a materialisation
of a moment of lived time, in the same way that my other work
is a materialisation of a lived moment in time, and they have
a very particular presence, each of them.
The 'ancestors' of Antony Gormley's work. As the curator describes
them, can be found in different parts of the British Museum. 'You
can find individual figures, called "aliens", from 'Field for the
British Isles', in the rooms numbered on the plan.' The artist states,
Is it possible to make today, with our contemporary recognition
of the importance of regional identities and difference and a
cherishing of them in a sense that the colonial project never
recognised, a work that has an aspiration to be a reservoir of
thought and feeling for this point of time, yet which also has
a resonance with things that have needed to be made since time
immemorial?
Human forms throughout the British Museum are highlighted by Gormley's
presentation: Mexican figurines (900 BC - AD 300); Bronze Age Cyprus
(1900-1200 BC); Mycenaean Greece (1400 - 1200 BC); clay figurines
from neolithic Greece (5300 - 4300 BC). One of the most ancient
of all are the lime-plaster statues from Ain Ghazal in Jordan (7200
BC).
Cult figures and effigies played a vital role in religious rituals.
Other attempts to sculpt the human body relate to burial ceremonies.
One of the most exciting discoveries of the 20th century was the
Emperor's Immortal Army of Xin, in China, dating from 210 BC - lifesize
terracotta warriors. It is, therefore, appropriate that Gormley
should create an 'Asian Field', a new version of the 'British Field'.
'Asian Field' will be three times larger that the presentation at
the British Museum. It will involve the manufacture of 120,000 hand-sized
clay figures by 300 villagers near Guangzhou in China, and will
then form a travelling exhibition.
If the 'Field' has a moral imperative, it is to remind us as viewers
that we are 'active makers, the agents of the future'. The artist's
poignant statement is as provocative as the superb exhibition of
his work,
Here are the spirits of the ancestors and the spirits of the
unborn. You are the conscious layer in this stratification of
mind that we call human being - what are you going to do about
it?
Michael Spens
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