Antony Gormley
‘Event Horizon’
The artist famous for designing ‘The Angel of the North’ sculpture took over the London skyline from May of this year. I first saw this on a BBC London News slot when the sculptures were first beginning to appear and wanted to find out more about this unusual stunt.
He constructed 31 life-sized casts of himself and placed them on top of various buildings in London. It encourages the eye to look up, possibly at buildings and sites they wouldn’t normally take notice of which I think is inspirational in itself. There are so many constructions in London that the eye is overwhelmed at places to look and there is only so much that you can take in during the brief period that you will be walking/driving/cycling past the buildings. Antony’s sculptures however, help to aid people in looking at various parts of London’s busy skyline instead of absorbing what is only at eye level.
‘Event Horizon’
The artist famous for designing ‘The Angel of the North’ sculpture took over the London skyline from May of this year. I first saw this on a BBC London News slot when the sculptures were first beginning to appear and wanted to find out more about this unusual stunt.
He constructed 31 life-sized casts of himself and placed them on top of various buildings in London. It encourages the eye to look up, possibly at buildings and sites they wouldn’t normally take notice of which I think is inspirational in itself. There are so many constructions in London that the eye is overwhelmed at places to look and there is only so much that you can take in during the brief period that you will be walking/driving/cycling past the buildings. Antony’s sculptures however, help to aid people in looking at various parts of London’s busy skyline instead of absorbing what is only at eye level.
It emphasises an important part of design – how a successful design must have that special something to make you look at it in the short space of time that you will take to pass it and to make you absorb it ahead of all the other elements of design that you will encounter during the day.
However, Antony’s aims of this stunt go beyond encouraging people to ‘look up’. He says, ‘"I just wanted to recognise that now, it's said, that over 50% of the human population on this planet now live within the city...a totally constructed humanly made environment and what that means." (BBC Article)
So by making the human sculptures a part of the man-made environment is making a highly literal point which I feel gets overlooked. So many places celebrate the natural element of the landscape and cities go against all of that, consumed in almost an entirely man made world.
Video Available on BBC London News Website, search ‘Sculptures rise over London’
BBC News Articlehttp://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6614487.stm
Photographs of the sculptures
http://www.antonygormley.com/newsite/viewwork.php?workid=541&page=12
Antony Gormley Website
http://www.antonygormley.com/newsite/home.html
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