Antony Gormley

Born: 1950

Antony GormleyAntony Gormley

Antony Gormley is both a brilliant sculptor and draughtsman. Gormley studied archaeology, anthropology and art history at Trinity College, Cambridge (1968-71) and Buddhist meditation in India and Sri Lanka (1971-4), experiences that profoundly inform his work. Influenced by the ideals of Indian sculpture as much as by those of modernism, Antony Gormley's sculptures and prints use the human form to explore man's existence in and relation to the world.

In 1994, Antony Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize for 'Field', a series of installations made in collaboration with different communities. Thousands of hand-sized clay figures were produced for each version, the shape of each determined by the person making it. Placed in a gallery that could be viewed only from the threshold, their gazes confronted the viewer so that the observer became the subject.

Antony Gormley has over the past 25 years revitalised the human form in sculpture through a radical investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation. "I am interested in the body", Gormley says, "Because it is the place where emotions are most directly registered. When you feel frightened, when you feel excited, happy, depressed somehow the body registers it." This can also be clearly seen in his original works on paper.

Antony Gormley was born in 1950 in London, where he continues to live and work.