| antony gormley domain field |
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|
 Stainless
steel bars, 4.76 mm x 4.76mm. Approximately 50 Domain sculptures, various
sizes, derived from moulds of local inhabitants of Newcastle Gateshead aged
2½ - 84 years. Domain Field at BALTIC, Gatehead |
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| How do you make
memory? What is the relationship between memory and anticipation? Can you make
something that is physical which at the same time evokes the process of
remembering? Is it possible to do this and make something fresh, like dew or
frost - something that just is, as if its form had always been like
this. The structures that make up these works are random matrices that identify the body less as an object and more as a place of becoming. I am drawn to fractal geometry and other ways in which science has allowed us to see and participate in the invisible. I feel somewhat uncomfortable describing my work because I want it to be free to be experienced freely. At the same time it is important that it comes from somewhere very concrete: the living moment of a living body experiencing its own existence. For the first time in my work I have asked a multitude of others to join me in having their bodies moulded: a moment in which the attitudes that are contained by the body are externally registered. These works have only been shown once before in a space where the subjects were originally moulded and the Domains made. The gallery was in the centre of the community from whom the volunteers were drawn. In Winchester they will not be so recognised and therefore somewhat free of their origins in a place full of its own stories. I am hoping that the work will not so much occupy as infect the space, calling upon its memories of other gatherings that once happened, and perhaps premonitions of others that have not yet happened. The Gilbert statue of Queen Victoria I have asked to be moved into the middle of the hall and turned 90° because I want her to be the sculptural foil for these works. Her mass and designation as Empress of the India speak a very different language of embodiment - a different marking of space and time. Antony Gormley January 2004 |
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