Tags
Another Place, Antony Gormley, Crosby, installation, landscape, light, place, Sculpture, seaside, water, waves
Another Place ….”where we have this diurnal exchange between object of contemplation and a field effect. This horizontal plane is absolute; with every tide the bodies are obscured, they disappear under the surface. It is your memory of those present but absent-from-view material bodies that you project onto an empty sea.”
(ANTONY GORMLEY – BODY SPACE AND BODY TIME: LIVING IN SCULPTURE, 2011)
“Our baptism begins with the fluid bath of the cell; we are made from water, though, at least in Britain, our weight is measured in ‘stones’. The antinomy of stone and water, central to all sculptural making and erosion, is a recurring dynamic in these sculptures; like stones cast in water, they ring outwards to the next point or node.”
(SUSAN STEWART – ON ANOTHER PLACE, IN THE SCULPTOR AS FIRST FINDER, 2007, From ANTONY GORMLEY: BLIND LIGHT, The Hayward Gallery, The South Bank Centre, London)
“The work deals with the theme of migration as the figures look out at a new horizon, but the complex administrative arrangements in staging it – he has had to come to an accommodation with a ‘horrendous variety of authorities’, including the coastguards, the RSPB and various local government agencies – has also raised interesting questions. ‘It has illustrated that no landscape is innocent, no landscape is uncontrolled,’ he explains. ‘Every landscape has a hidden social dimension to do with both its natural usage and the politics of territory. And I do like the idea that attempting to ask questions about the place of art in our lives reveals these complex human and social matrices.'”
(NICHOLAS WROE, QUOTING ANTONY GORMLEY, THE GUARDIAN, 25th JUNE 2005)
“Each person is making it again… for some it might be about human evolution, for others it will be about death and where we go, where our bodies finally belong, do they belong to the earth and the elements? And I think that’s what’s amazing about in a way the work of now – contemporary art, it’s no longer representing the ideology of a dominant class it’s actually an open space that people can make their own.”
(ANTONY GORMLEY IN BBC INTERVIEW, 2005)
“When you look out across the beach it will be difficult to distinguish what is a statue and what is a person and that is the condition of art which I am interested in.”
(ANTONY GORMLEY IN BBC INTERVIEW)
dianajhale 
An artist who makes a very powerful connection with me. I enjoyed this post Diana and loved seeing the progression of the tide. Your photography is so apt.
Diana, another thoughtful and thought-provoking piece from your treasure chest. I like the way you’ve curated the quotes. Haven’t been for a while and am deeply envious that we don’t have The Rusty Men at Meols. Some of the more exposed ones were deliciously covered in weed and barnacles the last time I went so as Bobby S highlighted they are in a state of flux.
Just recently learned of Another Place, and as always, your photographs provide me a dimension I would not know otherwise. Thank you for that. My initial impression was that statue and person are indistinguishable and your post solidifies that. Quite interesting, all.
Karen
Stunning photographs – really thought provoking, layers and layers of interpretation… I appreciate Antony Gormley’s ‘ideology’ comment, yet I suspect that not so much ‘art’ has been produced which perpetuates a dominant ideology. I think that comes when the work leaves the artist’s studio and is subjected to a process which is probably anathema to the one which created it. (An ideology which thinks it is acceptable to use the term ‘outsider art’, for example.)
Thanks for your fine pics and observations, reminding me of my Crosby visit with my mother in law, who was sadly dying of leukaemia. You’ve inspired me to write this recollection of that day. Thank you, I’m really grateful.
Going to Another Place
Look, bobbing out at sea is a lone grey ball or a buoy.
The jolt, as tide slowly sloshes back, of recognising a cranium with cheek bones, then jowl, throat, shoulder blade, chest, waist, balls.
All this we gleefully witness with Gill,
one blustery day between squalls,
our last joyful outing with her,
as her body’s blood buffets and turns against itself.
Rooted in foreshore sand, the buoy’s a metal man,
my kind of size, with barnacled calves.
Inward looking blindly out to sea, we’ve
briefly witnessed the water’s turn, the tumult of surging sky and spray,
through other eyes.
This cold, lone figure we stand alongside marks a million such moments.
Hi Diana. The figure alone as the tides come and go is quite evocative. An artist in Quebec, Canada did this years ago with several wooden figures walking into the sea, but they have since disintegrated. Jane
His comments about contemporary art not representing the ideology of a dominant class are breathtaking for someone with the privilege of an education at Cambridge and thence to the three top art schools in the UK. Nice sculptures though – the best versions of his logo.
Great combination of photos and words. We visit now and again and enjoy seeing the changes time and nature impose. Malc
I love Gormley. That quote about landscape/territory is really thought-provoking.
Diana – love the photographs and the whole concept. For me, the commentary, however, is too overblown. The objects are a commentary in themselves.
Great isn’t it? I really should try to visit more often as it’s not that far away and changes with time, tide and the weather.
Nice atmospheric photos.
Lovely. It is on my list of places to visit!
Excellent post – text skilfully put together, giving much to ponder … and superb photographs: the monochrome gives the figures something of the heroic status of characters in a Beckett piece.
Lovely collection of quotations and photographs about this wonderful place. Thanks for posting! Have you seen Gormley’s figure in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral? It’s breathtaking…
Gorgeous photos. I’ve never visited Another Place but I still have vivid memories of the similar piece (Event Horizon) he did in London on the occasion of his show at the Hayward… though I think the shore is a much more natural home for these figures than the roofs of buildings were. Perhaps because my current work focuses on Romanticism, I now can’t look at Another Place without thinking of Caspar David Friedrich’s many lone figures on seashores… I wonder if Gormley had them in mind at all when he made this? (I’d like to think so since the first place it was shown was the north coast of Germany…)
Lovely piece, Diana. I love these sculptures; and they become better and better in quite surprising ways as a result the action of of wave and weather.
Great post with atmospheric photos. One of my favourite places in the whole world.