Antony
Gormley is both a brilliant sculptor and draughtsman. Gormley studied
archaeology, anthropology and art history at Trinity College, Cambridge
(1968-71) and Buddhist meditation in India and Sri Lanka (1971-4), experiences
that profoundly inform his work. Influenced by the ideals of Indian sculpture
as much as by those of modernism, Antony Gormley's sculptures and prints use
the human form to explore man's existence in and relation to the world.
In 1994, Antony Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize for 'Field',
a series of installations made in collaboration with different communities.
Thousands of hand-sized clay figures were produced for each version, the shape
of each determined by the person making it. Placed in a gallery that could be
viewed only from the threshold, their gazes confronted the viewer so that the
observer became the subject.
Antony Gormley has over the past 25 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", Gormley
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." This can also be clearly seen in his
original works on paper.
Antony Gormley was born in 1950 in London, where he continues to
live and work.