Making Space
I'm very artistically excited right now and the main reason is that the Antony Gormley documentary on channel four this evening made me shamefully realise that I haven't been on the Hayward Gallery mailing list all this time. Because otherwise I would have already heard about his sculpture series called Blind Light, which looks like it's going to be AMAZING.
Lets not beat around the bush here, I love modern art and sculpture and although some of Gormley's work doesn't quite manage to get me excited, I do think his best stuff carries a lot of visual weight. I love art that has so much presence that you experience it more than you look at it, and I have a fantastic anticipatory feeling that like Anish Kapoor's Marsyas and Bill Viola's Five Angels for the Millenium, this exhibition is going to send me into a coma of stendhal syndrome.
All this aside, I didn't actually like the documentary very much. I didn't feel like it really cracked open Gormley's thought processes and methods so you could see what his work is about, which is what I really wanted from it. There were little, valuable insights when he talked about for instance, the Egyptian room at the British Museum and how he likes the sculptures there because they don't try to imitate movement - their power is accepted and intended as a static force. And I particularly enjoyed something he said along the lines of "as an artist you can't just have a normal wage and do what someone tells you, you have to find something worth while to do and do it completely."
Personally, I'm so infinitely interested in the artistic process - I never get tired of learning about how artists think, see and produce their work (I suppose that's why when I was doing art myself it was mostly based on the concept of perception). Consequently, the main joy for me came from being able to see him physically creating. Seeing him naked in an embryonic pose, eyes closed whilst he calmly gets covered in plaster by his assistants and how the vulnerability of this act then translates into the very solid outcome was really quite valuable.
But all this is nothing compared to the cloud in a room he created towards the end of the program. I can't wait to see it myself, I honestly can't. It's going to be on at the Hayward until the 19th of August and if you can go then you must. And go on a Monday if you can because it'll be half price.
Katherine Whitehouse
Creative Director
Lets not beat around the bush here, I love modern art and sculpture and although some of Gormley's work doesn't quite manage to get me excited, I do think his best stuff carries a lot of visual weight. I love art that has so much presence that you experience it more than you look at it, and I have a fantastic anticipatory feeling that like Anish Kapoor's Marsyas and Bill Viola's Five Angels for the Millenium, this exhibition is going to send me into a coma of stendhal syndrome.
All this aside, I didn't actually like the documentary very much. I didn't feel like it really cracked open Gormley's thought processes and methods so you could see what his work is about, which is what I really wanted from it. There were little, valuable insights when he talked about for instance, the Egyptian room at the British Museum and how he likes the sculptures there because they don't try to imitate movement - their power is accepted and intended as a static force. And I particularly enjoyed something he said along the lines of "as an artist you can't just have a normal wage and do what someone tells you, you have to find something worth while to do and do it completely."
Personally, I'm so infinitely interested in the artistic process - I never get tired of learning about how artists think, see and produce their work (I suppose that's why when I was doing art myself it was mostly based on the concept of perception). Consequently, the main joy for me came from being able to see him physically creating. Seeing him naked in an embryonic pose, eyes closed whilst he calmly gets covered in plaster by his assistants and how the vulnerability of this act then translates into the very solid outcome was really quite valuable.
But all this is nothing compared to the cloud in a room he created towards the end of the program. I can't wait to see it myself, I honestly can't. It's going to be on at the Hayward until the 19th of August and if you can go then you must. And go on a Monday if you can because it'll be half price.
Katherine Whitehouse
Creative Director
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