Antony Gormley and my thoughts on humanity

Attended the talk hosted by British Council with the help of HKIA 2010 and HKMA.


Wish to share my notes of Antony Gormley's talk. He shifted from one topic to another quite rapidly, so I added the title and numbering to make it easier for the reader.
If his ideas are in anyway belittled or misinterpreted, that is entirely my fault and I would like to apologise in advance.

The Body as Workshop - A talk by Antony Gormley

1. Seeing the city of Hong Kong
Before digging into anything about his artwork or his concepts. His first comment was how the typography of Hong Kong amazed him. He in particular could not forget about how the low hanging clouds were all over the city.
The slow ferry across the sea made him feel like going back in time to an age when the industrial revolution seemed to have just started and technology was still timidly experimenting. The dialogue between human made things and the elements, the urban environment, the close connection of earth and sea, the sky and the changing qualities of light all left a big impression to his short visit.

2. What is the role of art?
If we acknowledge the fact that the world is not limitless like before. Then human as a species has a big responsibility ahead of us. If the great human project is to carry on, we have to ask ourselves whether we are moving towards self-destruction.
For people who thought that the centre of the world was their own island or territory, what was going through the person's mind who cut the last tree down in Easter Island?

If we take art as a place for potential transformation,
Can art address such big human questions?
Can art address our value system which places emphasis on surplus?

Gormley grew up in UK, 'was a good hippy' (as he called himself) and went to India for 3 years learning about Buddhism and Hindu culture, he then later paid a visit to Kimberly, Australia. It was during his visits, that he saw a lot of work of art that were more than 1700 years old. It was before Aboriginal painting and it was art before any specialisation or placed in any framework, before art was in surplus culture.
For them, survival and making of art was fundamentally intertwined.
If such possibilities existed before, will art become the central, basic human expression again?

3. The un-institutionalisation of art
The other issue is that of art becoming institutionalised. Can art return to being part of everyday life?
After the end of Impression, art went into a period of question the syntax and framework of the Impressionist and began to address more the viewer instead of institutions.
What followed were big transfers in the western canon of art where art lost its cultural, religious roots and began to touch the previously unknown spiritual realm.
Ever since, the pre-knowledge of iconography seizes to be of necessity. Art became to be open to interpretation. Artists uses the space of art as resounding board for our own existence. In a globalised world, we are our own author of our identity.
Can art also do so to assert our individual identity and individual spirituality?

[Slide show begins]

4. 'Event Horizon', 2010, New York

Our human condition in urban living can perhaps be best illustrated in Manhattan as the epitome of modernism. If over 50% of us relate to the urban grid and experience human life not through primary sources (sun light, wind, free flowing water) and rather look into video, monitor, window, what does that say about our human condition?



Gormley's project in Manhattan involved placing 31 sculptures in the area. 4 on the ground and 27 almost on the perceptual edge of the skyline. As these figures begin to inhibit the real world they act as a relational view for its surrounding. The gaze into the horizon that the embedded homogeneous of the city cannot see.



The body, in a sense is something that is temporarily occupying a certain space. It is a temporary aggregation of cells where we look at. When we observe, we observe subjectively from ourselves to others and relate things through our body senses. The idea of 'you' or 'the others' is only possible with subjectivity. If truth is found through the usages of our senses, then we all live on the other side of the visible.
Then how do we begin to acknowledge the perception of our space if it is so often limited by our skin or edge or defined category.

5. 'Sultra', Sadler's Wall, London, 2008
Gormley worked with Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and 16 Monks from the Shaolin temple to do a play in London.
If we were to test the limit of the human bodies, we can also test the edges of our body in relationship to the space that our body occupies, which in this case were metal containers.
If we go back to basics. We have the human body, then clothes to fit that space. Then comes the bed, the room, the cubicle city space, then a residential building, then blocks of towering estates....
What are the potentials or limits of the human body under such a condition?

6. 'Space Station', Hayward Gallery London, 2007
The 'Space Station' is utilising and exploring the space within the gallery by making the piece as large as possible (fire regulations permitting). It is in fact a compressed fetus form with an opening under the elbow where people can crawl in and experience the same fetus form but in negative space and in a much smaller scale.
Through the action of crawling into that space, the viewer who enjoyed free mobility is devoid of his/her original freedom and experiences what the artwork 'Space Station' is experiencing within the gallery space.

7. 'Drawn', Hoxton Square, London 2000
In all these human figure piece, Gormley used his own body as the cast for the figures. The making involves him sitting still and silence and accept the condition of inertia of a sculpture.
The indexical body occupies a space at a certain time and it is the history of its own making. The body is not idealised and contextualised with the sense of architecture (that is, the boundaries of the gallery space). The body and elongated arms stretches out to sense the wall space and to sense the second space (negative space within architecture).
To him, good sculpture uses and emphasizes what it lacks. Rather than having the artwork occupy the privileged space, the viewer is in the prestige position and becomes the active, the moving, the thinking through the realisation of his / her own freedom.

If up, down, left, right, front and back are all subjective perspectives that we push to the space with our bodies. Then perhaps there is none better than directly addressing its limitations in order to make us revalue the space that we inhibit in. If art has moved beyond the duties of science, religion, mythology, then perhaps it is to address our body once again.
For nothing is fixed, everything is influx. The universe is continuously expanding, to fix sculpture at a defining space. The viewer becomes liberated.

8. '2008 pavilion for the Kivik Art Centre in Österlen', Sweden, 2008
In this lesser iconic Gormley piece, he collaborated with David Chipperfield Architects to create a 3 boxes with the same volume. The base is a tomb like experience as the viewer enters, then a stairs leads him/her to the second level where light and opening is contrasted with the ground floor experience to highlight the sensual body experience and how our body quickly adapts to different conditions of space. The third level is a tower like structure with opening to the top. Its vertical elements readdress the horizontal opening of the second level. Again to heighten and remind us of how our body senses the surrounding.

9. I shall skip the two piece 'Full Bowl' and 'Floor' because the lack of photo for these two piece diminishes the power to evoke thoughts.

10. 'Inside Australia' to mark the 50th anniversary celebrations of the Perth International Arts Festival in 2003, Lake Ballard, Western Australia, 2003


In the vast Salt Lake system that has been around for million of years. Gormley scattered 51 sculptural pieces over a 10 square mile area. Place the sculptures on such vast landscape. The viewer is reassured of his own freedom of movement. The differen bodies hang like whiskers, almost leaning beyond the point of deception. As the viewer walks around the lake. The heat, the crunching sound of salt and the vastness reminds him/her of his own space and solidarity on this planet.



Our dependency of the urban grid may mean that our profound relationship with time, space and memory may be lost.

11. 'Another Place', Crosby Beach, Liverpool, 2007.

In the Liverpool piece, besides the layer of meanings already mentioned above, the tides come in and come out and temporary erase the existence of the sculpture. Calling on to the viewer to remember the piece's space and time.
[My immediate thoughts: Is human not the same? Isn't the existence of our temporary life nothing but a memory of our occupation in a space and time. And this 'fact' is made concrete by others who are constantly viewing us. So what happens when technology enables us to create another virtual timeless self? And when all information can be uninterrupted recorded into virtual space, how then do we address the elemental space of pure senses?]



12. Feeling Material XIII, 2004Gormley is exploring energy flow through this piece by using one line. What happen is the that line hits the wall, come back, orbits around in the middle and goes out to hit the wall and moves back to orbits again.
[My immediate thoughts: if the way humans assert our body in relation to our surrounding. Then how do we both philosophical and physically relate our body with the universe which is continuously expanding? It really fascinated me then, how the universe becomes the universe with all these chaotic energy flows creating a harmonious balance for humans to inhibit in. Should we not treasure and respect this miraculous balance?]

13. 'Blind Light', Hayward Gallery, London, 2007

Using a room of 10 metre square. The room is filled with 1/3 part of cloud. As the visitor enters, he is disoriented and loses all sensory anchor points. The disorientation draws consciousness to the viewer's body. This room helps create a no environment, without any subjectivity.
[My personal experience of my visit to the Hayward Gallery in 2007 was surreal. One can hear muffled voices in the distance, but only realise another person when he/she is about 1 metre from myself. Hence you always here 'Oops, i'm sorry', 'Oh, you are there' muffles in the distance and you can barely tell whether that distance is near or far. One becomes extremely aware of one's own body as one really has to concentrate and trust one's own senses in order not to bump into another person or to the glass walls surrounding the space]

14. 'One Another', The Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square, London, 2009.
The fourth plinth was originally planned for William IV, but it remained empty for a very long time until somebody came up with the bright idea to occupy it with contemporary art. Ever since, artists have used it to showcase their artworks temporarily.
In this 'experiment' (as Gormley terms the project) Gormley invited the 2400 members of the general public to participate in his artwork. Interesting participants would invite themselves through web entry / leaflets and they were selected by random to go on the plinth.
Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days without a break, different people would have the freedom to take the vantage point and do whatever they wish to do on the platform. Gormley is essnetially using the viewer to be viewed.
and there were of course... the usual expected performers.... but to this Gormley replied that nakedness is not necessarily a problem or a shallow show, as the globe becomes warmer, we may become more tropical.
15. 'Allotment II', Hayward Gallery, London, 1996.
If we return back to the question of what role artworks plays in the scheme of humanity. Can art seize to analyse its own internal framework and return us to our own vitality and our own consciousness? By placing body on the extreme conditions, on top of buildings at the very edge, perhaps we can then become more aware of our own consciousness as we as viewers relate ourselves with the other human scale and put that in context within the urban grid.


16. Angel of the North, Gateshead England, 1994.
This sculpture is a totemic, iconic piece and it marks the end of the industrial age. It address the change from industrial to information. It sits on top of ore deposits, in particularly, coal which sparked off the industrial revolution that have changed fundamentally how humans interact with his/her surroundings.
Gormley interesting noted that it is an angel that will never fly and is not invisible.
[My immediate thoughts: Humanity must rely on his own consciousness and own understanding to make his living space a better space and without reliance on any all knowing god]

17. 'Breathing Room', White Cube, London 2010
In day time, visitors enter and walk around the space experiencing with the many possibilities of how our bodies relate to space. Viewers than look at other viewers to make association of their own in relation to other viewers and the space around them.
The interesting thing about this piece is that it absorbs sunlight in the morning and begins to glow in the dark. Is this then a drawing, an architecture, a fabricated reality to regulate our bodies to fit certain spaces, or, as city dwellers, are we entitled to more choices?18. Ending comments
Gormley felt that it is essential for humans to link ourselves with the landscape and hold on to memory in that sense. The land, time, space we occupy and space that others occupy.
We know now for certain the limitations of human civilisation. The idea of the other horizon is better is but a phony concept where colonisation of other planets is nothing but a lavish and extravagant dream that we are not capable of before our own planet runs out of resources.
As technology begins to divide us more and more from the elemental world we have to refocus our attention on the close ties we have to our land and hold on dearly to these elemental conditions that all species except humans have learnt to embrace and respect.
If there is nothing more, nothing better out there, then how do we face reality? Or perhaps there is nothing out there, but there is something right here, within us that we are capable of utilising to make this world a better place for everyone.

The final sentence he said in the lecture was this.
'We have to learn how to live barely and that will be difficult.'

19. My casual chats with Gormley after the talk.
I love how my t-shirt says 'I see dead people', can read that in context with Gormley's work =)
[G:Gormely, Juanjaime:J]

a). My first question was a bit dumb and self-explanatory. But I was very nervous talking for the first time to my idol. I blurted the question out without thinking through it carefully:

J: Your last sentence in the lecture was that 'We have to learn how to live barely and that will be difficult.' With all the sculptures you have produced, they try to explore body and its relation to space. But we are restricted forever in our own bodies. I suppose that is our limitation. But again, with our bodies we have created endless potentials.
So do you think the human species has more limitations or more endless potentials?

G: (smiles), I myself have not found the answer to this question.

b). I told him I understood EXACTLY what he meant by space, time, landscape and memory because I was engaged in the Echigo Tsumari Art Triennial. And he fondly recalled the experience of him finishing the work and lying down on the ground with an old lady who once lived in the house. Gormley thought that the project was already alright when she gave him a gentle grin as they look up into the 'Another Singularity' piece hanging in mid air of the house.

'Another Singularity', Echigo Tsumari Triennial 2009, Japan. 2009.
I then told him I was involved in the Setouchi International Art Festival 2010 and was surprised to learn that he didn't know about the project!

c). Then I made another stupid comment (I was really really very nervous, but eager to engage with such a humble but intellectual individual) when one of the audience asked him about public projects. He said that he planned to create a 120 metre transparent human figure which allowed the general public to walk through the legs and upwards through the body, into the brain and down the other side. It would be a double helix and placed near the Olympic arena.

I said this was very politically charged as you are placing the piece in Beijing Olympics, so it is an critique on Communism with one human figure controlling the flow of tragic and space allowed for the general mass. And he politely corrected me that it was the London Olympics 2012 and that it was based on the Tatlin model, which luckily, for me, still made references to the Marxist ideology.
Sigh, the embarrassment of one's ignorance and rushing to conclusions.

d). When conversing with Gormley, I was very excited because I first saw his piece the 'Blind Light' in Hayward Gallery, London. I was blown away by how there was no instrument of 'art' or 'art' related materials that we usually associate with. Just four walls of glass, some man made fog/cloud and room light. It made me greatly conscious of my immediate primary senses.

I told him bluntly that the 'Blind Light was his best piece if it tries to heighten our body senses while the other sculptural pieces were weaker. Although he very gentlemanly, kindly agreed with my comment.I would like to now, take back my comment.

After further understanding his pieces. I think 'Blind Light' enabled the viewer to heighten our own individual senses, but the power of relating to otherness and other space was more powerful in his signature sculptural pieces. Because it was the solitude which brought out the homogenous mass and asserted the mass with its individuality. While 'Blind Light' was more oriented inwards, the focus was on once individual experience through spaces.

20. Some interesting questions raised by other listeners.
Person 1, 'If your piece is based on the human body, then do you talk about the mind?'
G: ......(hesitates)....... yes, I also talk about the mind in my piece......

Person 2, 'In Hong Kong, we are desperately in need for good public art. You perhaps have seen and made good public art all over the world. We in Hong Kong have no resource and no support and artists are always limited and constrained by the authorities, what would be a good example of public art in UK? Perhaps the Angel of the North piece?'
G: No I would not say my piece is good in anyway. I am slightly embarrassed about the Angel of the North piece actually.

Most people, 'Hi, I am bla bla bla, I work in bla bla bla, here is my name card, it was an amazing show, very interesting, it would be lovely to see your piece in Hong Kong, I have seen your works here and there, thanks for a very interesting talk.......'
Hence I barely remembered their questions.

He did pay particular intense attention to a teacher who wanted to ask him to help out in education. She mentioned something about the tragedy of people ending their own lives and poverty and Gormley being Gormley, was very concerned with tragic human conditions and asked her to write down her contact so he can try his best to help out in the future.

21. My afterthoughts
1. Why are we still wearing clothes, if clothes is not a necessity (excluding extreme weather conditions)? Have we not enough wisdom and confidence to acknowledge that the human body is perfect as it is?

A few answers:
As more and more people acknowledge the fact that we are facing limited resource (unless we suddenly get Superman's stone, whatever the name of it was) and with the 'Death of God' (no, I haven't read the book yet, apologies to Nietzsche fans).
The continuous rise in individuality and equality would ultimately mean that resources will be redistributed evenly. And if that happens, 'we will have to learn how to live barely and that will be difficult.'

But I honestly do not see the logic behind wearing clothes if it is of no necessity to our comforts (excluding extreme conditions) and is simply a cultural trait. People may begin to say, so what, after clothes, we start not living in houses, start bartering, is that not a going back in civilisation?
I think the phrase 'development', 'progress', 'civilisation' is waiting for a brand new interpretation that will lead us to a society that is created for the betterment of humanity and the space the humanity occupies.

2.Which is more likely to bring human civilisation to its knees? Continue war and exploitation of resources or stop wearing clothes?

3. Western ideology are turned more outwards while Eastern ideology is turned more inwards.

In the case of the Greeks, the looked outwardly for a perfect condition and debated that humans are continuing to strive for that perfection of beauty that lay somewhere hidden (i.e. there exists a model of a perfect chair somewhere in the cosmos and we humans are constantly refining our understand and skills to create that perfect chair).
The Jews carried on this belief with perfect truth and beauty embodied in a single all knowing God. His teachings then was manifested on earth through the Christians with Jesus Christ to emphasis the longing of the suffering humanity to seek faith, hope and love through a perfect human being. Colonisation was a belief in an outwardly better world beyond the horizon, the urge to discover new lands, collect exotic items, explore in the final frontiers was conscious in the minds of the west. Their believe in freedom, equality and liberty to all was to be done through the mass movement with big outward articulations. (i.e. French Rev., Marxism, Martin Luther King Junior)

The Eastern ideology ever since the beginning of Chinese civilisation has continued to look at the human condition more inwardly. Although the maps of China expanded and contracted, it was mostly within similar boundaries. Pioneers who traveled beyond the boundaries of China had little intention to colonise other countries as the orients saw themselves to be at the centre of their world already. Philosophers such as Confucius and Buddha gave advices and wisdom but did not ask their disciples to spread the good news as far as the sea can reach. They emphasis on the inward understanding and pursuit for spiritual truth through looking into oneself and in harmony with one's surrounding. The struggles of Chinese dynasties has also always been turned inward with the similar races attacking each other. Little was their interest in engaging with the others (with the small exception of the Mongols who were essentially non-Han Chinese race).

The dichotomy of the East and West may be perhaps because of the fertility of the land and resource of the East (at least in the emperor's eyes), enabling it to be sustainable on its own and not push for surplus elsewhere. [I shall not venture further in this topic, but a study into the different way Western and Eastern artist regards themselves in relation to their society may also shed some light on this issue].

Gormley also noted that the Western psyche is very used to linear development, while the East is more about writing a more stable circle. And it's about time our civilisation try to figure out a balance between the two before it's too late.

4. We are so familiar with our own body and relation to another that we forget about its possibilities and are trapped within our own assumed and defined limits. Gormley's piece enable us to see the limitations of our body in order so we can bare this in mind when we explore new ways of interpreting our body in relation to the space around us.

5. The marble tower of artist must come down to meet the mass and be at harmony with the mass. For this, not belittling artist, but artist must be humble and non-self centered if he/she is addressing the universal human conditions which looks at what makes us similar rather than focusing on the the idiosyncratic individual.

6. Ah, the irony of me using the internet to talk about space, time and memory of a site specific work. And perhaps the final frontier that has never ending resource is the internet?

7. Antony Gormley just become my third favourite non-architectural aritst, after Mark Rothko and Oscar Oiwa. And followed by Anish Kappor and JMW Turner.

8. Gormley is planning a work in Hong Kong!!!
The increasingly abandoning garage in front of the old Star Ferry pier. We should thank our government for taking the pier down and reclaiming the land. Otherwise, Gormley may have to find a more... remote place for his project.

9. 'Art is there to measure what we have lost to modernisation' - Fram Kitagawa

10. 'Art is using the limited to talk about the unlimited' - Alexander Hui Yat Chuen

Disclaimer
Before putting this on the blog, I seriously thought about keeping the article to myself and share it amongst my close friends. But if I only occupy a finite amount of space and time, perhaps more interesting discussions can come about if I made this open to the public.
I hope the owners of the photos which I randomly pulled from the internet will forgive me for not asking for permission and accept the humbleness of all human beings in the scale of cosmic relationship.

And if I have in any way offended any individual in this blog entry.
I apologies for my ignorance,'we all live on the other side of the visible' afterall.

Antony Gormely official website
http://www.antonygormley.com/