Anthony Gormley

video installation

This double issue of Audio Arts recorded at Documenta 8 in Kassel West Germany, comprises interviews, statements and commentary juxtaposed with audial reportage of soundworks, installations and local ambience.

from Audio Arts Magazine Volume 8, Number 4, 1988

Transcript

William Furlong: Well the first artist that we are going to talk to is Anthony Gormley who is showing work in the Fredericianum which, along with the Orangerie, are the two principal exhibition spaces here. Anthony to what extent did you determine the space that you’re showing in?

Anthony Gormley: Well originally I asked for a space with one entrance so the works could be self-contained, but I didn’t get it I got this space. I think what I’m trying to do here is to retain the idea of the integrity of the space in spite of the interruption of people walking through it. I think the point of the work is as always to try and balance the sense of an enclosed space under compression within the lead skins, with the space that the objects occupy and I think it doesn’t work at the moment. When you have a solid stream of people cutting the room in half it just doesn’t work. Perhaps it will when the rain stops outside and people go back to drinking coffee in the cafes and it is a bit quieter.

WF: Did you actually make the pieces for this space or were the pieces already in existence?

AG: I’d already begun ‘To the Ends of the Earth’ when I was invited to be in Documenta and I felt they were appropriate works to show. I then went on with the other two works with a strong view to them being shown together

WF: You’ve mentioned one and another one leaning up to the wall to my left, seem to almost be three-dimensional mirror images of each other

AG: They are double figures - one that lies on its side with the two figures pointing outwards, each lying on its side and the other, the one that is leaning up against the wall are two figures facing each other with the heads and shoulders pulled apart. In both of them I’m trying something that I’ve never tried before, which is really to give an idea of separation within one object, the idea of division in unity, the idea of perhaps the fact that we all come from the dividing of the cell that there is something that are both part of our physical beings and also part of our mental beings, that has to do with division; whether that’s the division of our brains, whether it’s the fact that we are divided into male and female, whether there are tensions in us towards the pull of external action and internal realisation. Those tensions are what I’m trying to touch on in these pieces. For me it was important; what I have never done before is allow the structure of the axis - the way that the surface is divided into strong horizontal and vertical sections, previously in almost all of my work that’s existed within the axis of the architecture and there has been a strong theatrical presentation, usually with a figure centrally placed in a room, with this I’ve made a much more casual installation with the works just rolled into the space. They don’t have that kind of theatrical authority and as a result I think the works invite one to use them as mental containers in a far less confrontational way and I thought that was for me a big step, because it means that the potential for the works to be redundant is far greater; they can just be ignored. By doing that I think I introduce the question into the consciousness of the viewer of how it is to be used.

Michael Archer: Well there are a couple of things that struck me immediately when I saw the pieces. First something that you have just touched on, which is the way in which the lead encases the forms and is divided much more than you have done in the past. For example, with this one that is leaning, all of the strips are quite narrow and vertically oriented and the one that is lying on the floor has a very small network of squares over the whole form, which goes back to what you were trying to say. This one leaning against the wall is a much more casual kind of placement than other pieces of yours, which do relate to the wall and the floor of the space. For example the one where you were bolted to the wall, coming straight out just above the floor; there is with this that kind of connection.

AG: But I think I’m doing that, I think I’m doing that in a different way.