Antony Gormley: Britain's greatest sculptor comes to Austria

INTERVIEW: LAUREN STEVENTON; ©ANTONy GORmLEy, KUNSThAUS BREGENz; mARKUS TRETTER
immaterial is reversed: I like sculpture to
undermine the dialectic between the imagined
and the real.
How would you say your understanding of
the relationship between the self and the
environment developed?
I like the idea of the body as an example
of a collective condition. At first I just used
my own, but then I realized that you could
engage other bodies, and I think that’s what
‘Horizon Field’ is about: the bodies that
perceive, move around, through and apart
from this relational field become part of
it. I’m about to explore ‘Event Horizon’ in
New York – 27 body forms on the skyline of
buildings around central Manhattan, and
four on the ground. I don’t think the work
is about contemplating bodies, but about
how they interfere with perception: the city
becomes re-examined and the inhabitants
have to modify their behavior in relation to
this ‘infection’. If you’re walking down a street
where there is an object that shares certain
characteristics with you but it’s made of iron
and it’s more static, you become more aware
of your own passage through time and space
and question your own ‘inhabiting’. The
relationship between the things that you can
touch, the things that you can see and the
things you imagine is key. My experiment
is similar to a chemical catalyst; a reaction
begins that perhaps allows people to be in
and see their environment differently.
Does this relationship change in a city landscape
such as New York compared to the
mountainous landscape in Austria?
Mountains have also become playgrounds,
haven’t they? Certainly I’ve got some very
Interview
I like sculpture
to undermine
the dialectic
between the
imagined and
the real
wild positions for these works but a lot of
them are in locations where people walk, ski,
mountain bike, climb. Broadly speaking the
question that the work asks is where does the
human project fit within space at large and
the different topographies of the earth? In the
Vorarlberg we’ve got some extreme positions;
on the edge of a cliff, familiar to the mountaineer
who likes to face a physical challenge,
but others will be much more integrated into
areas of seasonal grazing and the making of
hay and still others will be simply on exposed
low hills between the mountains. It’s very
important to me that this is neither the realm
of the Gods, nor the realm of the village, but
somewhere in between. I’m imagining all this
but the whole point is to do it and see how
these works both confront and contest, but
also perhaps become familiar within these
environments.■A www.antonygormley.com
a u s t r i a ’ s hi d d e n t r e a s u r e s 05