Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Antony Gormley - Field at the British Museum

15:35 / 07.01.03

Wandered into the British Museum in London yesterday and was delighted to find a free exhibition of Antony Gormley's Field for the British Isles. Really primitive figures - as most of you will probably know - but the sheer volume of them facing you from a room is amazing. Also at the museum is a collection of Gormley's drawings and painting, many of which I really loved - very stark figures on stark backgrounds, basically.

Field has toured quite extensively, I think. Anyone seen it elsewhere?

The exhibition at the British Museum goes on until the end of January, I think.

17:35 / 07.01.03

Saw it where you did, in the BM extension, sfd. I have only seen pictures before and was keen but didn't really know what to expect. I feared it would be silly, somehow. And it is silly, very very funny, but also a massive piece, moving and thought-provoking.

The process of manufacture apparently (deliberately?) causes differences in eventual colour and many hands are employed in the making, so each figure is individual. And yet hundreds might be made by the same hand or fired together in the kiln, breaking the mass into little groups, striated through the piece. I hadn't anticipated that and it was very thought provoking, all the little clay tribes.

Standing there, towering over the figurines, you feel quite exposed because of the gaze of the multitude of little upturned eyes. You feel appraised and questioned. You don't often feel under scrutiny as you scrutinise art. There's even the Toy Story suggestion that they would all be doing something else if you hadn't interrupted them and drawn their attention.

It's absolutely brilliant and I'm so glad I went to see it. What a clever bugger Gormley is. I know Haus has been to see it too. Would be interesting to hear from him about the echoes of ancient, primitive sculptural forms, if there are any. The BM suggests there are and plays these up in its publicity, dotting their collections with linked figurines from many cultures. I didn't have time to check those out because I got lost looking at the Dürer show instead.

Tryphena Absent

17:57 / 07.01.03

I saw this years ago at the Hayward but I remember this curiosity about all these little pieces because they all have different features and you find yourself wondering what little things they do when they're not standing in the crowd watching you. I have a postcard on my wall but it's not representative of the actual work at all... might go and have another look tomorrow!

22:08 / 07.01.03

I nipped in to see this when I was waiting to register at the IHR, I think. I loved it, for many of the reasons that Xoc gives. But one of the things that I was most moved by was the way in which the figures at the front look up at the viewer. I don't know why - perhaps it was just that it made them seem more human.

The Return Of Rothkoid

23:26 / 07.01.03

There's a smaller - much - version at the AGNSW which is quite affecting, though it's nowhere near as large. I'd like to see one of the larger scale ones now, I think - though the precarious nature of the one I've seen perhaps lends it a different experience? It's really like you're a blundering god or something in the AGNSW's one - you have to be really careful not to knock any of them over, whereas I don't think I'd feel that in some of hte other fields...

08:27 / 08.01.03

I thought it was amazing. Though I wonder if the kids and carers on Merseyside who made all the figures actually got paid, in some fashion... hope so.

10:36 / 08.01.03

I've always loved the pictures, and finally saw the real thing with Xoc. Yes it's funny, yes it's cute, but there's something so moving about the collective hopefulness one projects onto all those little upturned faces - like they've all been waiting in quiet expectation of your arrival. I felt like God - slightly worried that I couldn't possible meet such expectation, but also quote humbled by their faith. I also had a great urge to stage-dive a la 'Fame Academy's Ainsley...

11:26 / 08.01.03

Being able to get so close to the figures was one of the best things about it, although I got a slight sense of vertigo/dizziness and had to step away - I felt like I was going to slip and crash onto them.

ONLY NICE THINGS

09:28 / 16.01.03

I adored it. On one level because, as has been said, it was so cute, and so hopeful, and gave one the unusual experience of looking at a piece of art and finding the piece of art looking back.

Also, I like the fact that it was a process, rather than a piece. That is, the actual "field" is not a single exhibit, looking a particular way, but a set of rules. If you had enough people and a large enough space adhering to those rules, you could have an infintely large piece that was in some sense the same as this one or the one Rothkoid saw, because the same set of rules were followed in its creation. It's a bit like a ceramic stylograph...

11:21 / 09.02.03

Saw it years ago at the Ikon in Brum - seemed like everyone had one of those little critters in their loo.

20:31 / 14.03.04

I saw Antony Gormley's Domain Field exhibition in Winchester at the weekend. Similar to the other exhibition mentioned in this thread, it was figures, but this time they were made out of connected metal rods. It was in Winchester's Great Hall (the one with the Round Table), which seemed to be good setting (made the Great Hall much more interesting, although I don't think the figures were supposed to be knights). From a distance the figures looked like strange metal people, just hanging around, where as close up it is harder to make out their shape, and you can see the tangled metal.

23:49 / 15.03.04

Saw Domain Field at the Baltic last year and was slightly disappointed. Having seen the construction process a few months before (you could peer down from a gallery and watch Gormley's minions making the sculptures) I was really looking forward to it, but... even though I knew they were life-sized from casts of real people I'd kinda expected them to be bigger and more impressive. I still liked it, but can imagine that seeing them in an old hall, as they are now, would be much better than in the open white space that I did. In fact, it looks very cool indeed:

Reminds me of Doctor Who (wasn't there an episode where the Cybermen were in medieval England?)

Anyone seen Quantum Cloud? It's my local bit of Gormley, next to the Millennium Dome/North Greenwich tube. Similar to Domain Field, it's metal rods and from the 'wrong' angle just looks like a pile of coat hangers, but from another you can distinguish the human form within. Now, a room full of them would be great...

12:46 / 17.03.04

I saw the exhibitions at the BM and the Baltic too. I liked the Newcastle set up - unlike the Field for the British Isles, you could not only view it from above, but also get amoungst it. This in turn was good to see from the viewing platform, having other people amidst the models.

I went to Nieuwpoort for a wedding recently and there was an odd site that greeted us when we went for a ride. We took the tram south along the beech so that we were as far south as you can get without going over into France - the nearest biggest town was Dunkirk at any rate), and there among the sand and the surf were life size figures of rusted iron (?) all stretched out along the beech as far as the eye could see. I'm not sure the name of the exhibition, but it was truly a sight, and very much appreciated.