Antony Gormley at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Sydney
11 Mar 2010
Anna Schwartz Gallery Sydney is pleased to present a new FIRMAMENT exhibition by Antony Gormley. Following on from the success of his recent exhibition at the Anna Schwartz Gallery in Melbourne in 2007, Gormley has created a single substantial sculptural installation that tests and responds to the architectural limits of the gallery space created within the historic Carriageworks.
Gormley will install a single ‘expanded field’ constructed from 1030 150mm diameter steel balls and 1849 steel elements, welded together to create a non-regular, polygonal structure whose form dissolves and resolves throughout the gallery. Huge in scale measuring 20 x 12.6 x 8.4 meters and built in situ so that it pushes hard up against the edges of the gallery space, the installation, entitled FIRMAMENT, is an assembled matrix of volumes that map a celestial constellation while also implying the form of a body lost within it. With its graphic outline, FIRMAMENT, the fourth in a series of works that attempt to map space, is the most monumental to date using massive balls and elements that engage boldly with both the viewers body and with shared space.
The resulting web could be construed as an expanded diagram of microscopic mineral structures as much as a condensed and domesticated map of the heavens. At times the work feels claustrophobic, while at others it comes across as a landscape-like gestural drawing. Gormley’s work has always been about our sense of perception, testing what it feels like to experience our physical presence in certain conditions of time and space. In this installation, the viewer is asked to continually readjust her relationship to the field as she navigates through it. The work was developed with Tristan Simmonds and it builds upon the collaboration that has been developing rapidly in the last three years with major projects all over the world.
Antony Gormley was born in 1950 in London, England, where he lives and works. He has participated in major group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1982 and 1986), Documenta VIII, Kassel, Germany (1987) and the Sydney Biennale (2006). Solo exhibitions include The Hayward, London (2007), ICA, Singapore (2005), Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2004), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (2003), and the National History Museum, Beijing, China (2003). He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994.
Gormley will install a single ‘expanded field’ constructed from 1030 150mm diameter steel balls and 1849 steel elements, welded together to create a non-regular, polygonal structure whose form dissolves and resolves throughout the gallery. Huge in scale measuring 20 x 12.6 x 8.4 meters and built in situ so that it pushes hard up against the edges of the gallery space, the installation, entitled FIRMAMENT, is an assembled matrix of volumes that map a celestial constellation while also implying the form of a body lost within it. With its graphic outline, FIRMAMENT, the fourth in a series of works that attempt to map space, is the most monumental to date using massive balls and elements that engage boldly with both the viewers body and with shared space.
The resulting web could be construed as an expanded diagram of microscopic mineral structures as much as a condensed and domesticated map of the heavens. At times the work feels claustrophobic, while at others it comes across as a landscape-like gestural drawing. Gormley’s work has always been about our sense of perception, testing what it feels like to experience our physical presence in certain conditions of time and space. In this installation, the viewer is asked to continually readjust her relationship to the field as she navigates through it. The work was developed with Tristan Simmonds and it builds upon the collaboration that has been developing rapidly in the last three years with major projects all over the world.
Antony Gormley was born in 1950 in London, England, where he lives and works. He has participated in major group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1982 and 1986), Documenta VIII, Kassel, Germany (1987) and the Sydney Biennale (2006). Solo exhibitions include The Hayward, London (2007), ICA, Singapore (2005), Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon (2004), Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, England (2003), and the National History Museum, Beijing, China (2003). He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994.
