Antony Gormley produces figurative and abstract sculptures sited across urban and natural landscapes, including installations in Edinburgh and Liverpool. Many works use molds taken from his own body and engage shorelines, parkland, and historic sites. The Body Buildings exhibition ran in Beijing from November 2024 to April 2025 and a monograph of the same title is scheduled for publication by SKIRA on October 7. Gormley works with materials such as terracotta clay and iron to evoke construction and bodily presence, combining muscular, lifelike curvatures with cubist and brutalist geometric forms that interrogate the bond between body and architecture.
In Edinburgh, along a stream known as the Water of Leith, six bronze figures known as "6 TIMES" stand amid the current and beside bridges, peering enigmatically down the urban waterway. Similarly, in Liverpool, "Another Place" comprises 100 life-size sculptures made from 17 molds that artist Antony Gormley ( previously) took from his own body, installed permanently along Crosby Beach. In fact, the artist has dozens of permanent installations throughout the U.K. and all over the world, the majority of which interact with shorelines, parkland, and historic sites.
Using terracotta clay and iron for pieces like "Resting Place II" and "Buttress," Gormley taps into materials often found in construction in the form of bricks or angular frameworks. He describes his approach as a means "to think and feel the body in this condition." Whether arranged on the floor in various positions or leaning against walls, his figures are simultaneously independent of the architecture and indelibly connected to it. "Buttress," for example, prompts us to inquire whether the wall is holding up the person or the other way around.
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