Antony Gormley

Date: 23 June 1999 - 25 September 1999

The artist Antony Gormley (1950, London) presented a landscape at Stroom, that consisted of 20.000 terracotta figures, each about 25 centimetres high, that seem to be staring at the viewer. At first sight all the figures look the same, but in fact they are hand made and all individually different. To create them Gormley went to Mexico in 1991 and worked with 60 local brickmakers. Together the little sculptures form a rust-brown multitude, which occupies the entire space and overwhelms the visitor.
While Field clearly illuminates a specific aspect of sculpture itself, Stroom hcbk is also interested in the way the work raises the notion of 'publicness'. This comes partly from the way that Gormley has involved a large group of people in making this enormous series and partly from the literal portrayal of a mass public. Gormley is one of the English artists participating in The Hague Sculpture 1999. His remarkable project Field received a great deal of attention by the public and the media. The exhibition at Stroom hcbk was prolonged for two weeks.