Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley was a sculptor. He studied art history and archaeology and then also interestingly, Buddhist meditation in India and Sri Lanka. These experiences profoundly informed his work. He was influenced greatly by the ideals of Indian sculpture as much as by those of modernism. His sculptures of the human form to explore a mans 'existence' in relation to the world. He is mainly known for the lead figures cast of his own body and the Angel of the North. He believed that the spiritual and physical selves are inseparable is reflected in works such as ' Land, Sea and Air II ' - three figures crouching, kneeing and standing, were placed on the seashore. He did this trying to embody the process of Buddhist spiritual awareness and also referring to the earthly condition of the body and mans relationship with his surroundings.
The techniques he used when creating his sculptures are mainly casting plaster and scrim. Gormley firstly covers his body in Vaseline, then clingfilm and then starts he the plastering process. Then the plaster cast are used to an iron cast.

"Things already exist.

Sculpture already exists.

The job is to transform what exists in the outer world

By uniting it with the world of

sensation, imagination and faith.

Action can be confused with life.

Much of human life is hidden.

Sculpture, in stillness, can transmit what may not be seen.

My work is to make bodies into vessels

that both contain and occupy space.

Space exists outside the door and inside the head.

My work is to make a human space in space.

Each work is a place between form and formlessness,

a time between origin and becoming.

A house is the form of vulnerability,

darkness is revealed by light.

My work is to make a place, free from knowledge,

free from history, free from nationality to be experience freely.

In art there is no progress, only art.

Art is always for the future. "