Antony Gormley on Sculpture

One of the world’s most powerful creative practitioners reflects on the ideas, processes and histories behind his craft

Antony Gormley occupies an unusual position as a highly popular sculptor – known especially for his Angel of the North (1998), a national landmark in the UK – who is also widely regarded as one of the most intellectually engaged artists working internationally. He is grounded in archaeology and anthropology, and looks to Asian and Buddhist traditions as much as to Western sculptural history, which he believes reached a punctuation point with Rodin.

This is the first book to focus on Gormley’s thoughts on sculpture, positioning his career and artistic philosophy in relation to its history.

The book is structured thematically over four chapters:
– 'Body Space and Body Time: Living in Sculpture’ explores Gormley’s thoughts on the body, time and space in relation to examples of his own work.
– ‘Sculptors’ was first delivered as a series of lectures for the BBC; in each, Gormley discusses a sculpture he considers to be of huge creative importance: Epstein’s Rock Drill (1913–15), Brancusi’s Endless Column (1935–38), Giacometti’s La Place (1948–49) Joseph Beuys’s Plight (1985) and Richard Serra’s The Matter of Time (2005).
– In ‘Mindfulness’, Gormley outlines the influence of Buddhist and Jain sculpture on his work and ideas.
– ‘Expansion’ explores some of the artist’s most recent sculptures.

Beautifully packaged in a cloth-bound reading-book format, and presented in Gormley’s own voice, this book captures the universal resonance of an artist with an unerring ability to tap into the public consciousness.

Antony Gormley, sculptor and installation artist, was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994 and has been a Royal Academician since 2003.
A?former editor of Aperture magazine, Mark Holborn is the author of several books, including Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture (with Meghan Dailey).