![](https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2023/Antony-Gormley/Installation-Views-2/RESTING_21.jpg?w=960&h=720&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1700578537&s=7d964a402185a1b4f9b360457f329029 960w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2023/Antony-Gormley/Installation-Views-2/RESTING_21.jpg?w=1280&h=960&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1700578537&s=738fe64f8ffbc1a64c9ba8bb5aef9cd7 1280w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2023/Antony-Gormley/Installation-Views-2/RESTING_21.jpg?w=1600&h=1200&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1700578537&s=eb64dd7fb20c38e71e3fe9b22edcf4a6 1600w, https://white-cube.transforms.svdcdn.com/production/uploads/Exhibitions/Gallery-Exhibitions/Bermondsey/2023/Antony-Gormley/Installation-Views-2/RESTING_21.jpg?w=2360&h=1770&q=80&auto=format&fit=crop&crop=focalpoint&fp-x=0.5&fp-y=0.5&dm=1700578537&s=5e590339b788d918e4b2eb382cf0d105 2360w)
Antony Gormley Body Politic (Bermondsey, 2023)
Antony Gormley
22 November 2023 – 28 January 2024
Dates
22 November 2023 – 28 January 2024
‘The responsibility of the art of our time is to reflect on and provide instruments for examination and self-awareness.’
Presenting a ‘ground’, and grounded like Retreat, Gormley’s Resting Place (2023) unfolds across the expanse of South Gallery II, conjuring a dense urban landscape. This field of fired clay blocks materialises 244 body-forms as a labyrinthine terrain. We are invited to negotiate this maze of bodies at rest: prone, splayed, foetal, spaced with just enough room for our passage. They evoke a range of situations, from the abandonment of bodies on the beach to the plight of those who have been forcibly displaced by crises of conflict, climate change or resource scarcity. In a forthcoming essay on the exhibition, Teresa Kittler has written that Resting Place ‘also speaks to the broader cultural acceptance of the rights of money, goods, ideas and tourists to travel – a phenomenon accelerated by new technologies – at the same time as national governments control or deny that right to migrants.’ In the North Gallery a series of six ‘Weave Works’ map the volume of the human body. Cast from orthogonal, latticed cast iron bars and exposed to the elements, these rusty sculptures allow space and light to pass through them, creating an illusion of shifting density and bridging sculptural and architectural space. In contrast to the freestanding norms of sculpture, three of the works in Test (2021–23) are propped against the walls of the gallery and the other three touch them, implicating the room as part of the work and making visitors aware of their position within it, as well as their movement inside it.
Gormley’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and internationally with exhibitions at Musée Rodin, Paris (2023); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2022); Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands (2022); National Gallery Singapore, Singapore (2021); Schauwerk Sindelfingen, Germany (2021); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2019), Delos, Greece (2019); Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy (2019); Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania (2019); Long Museum, Shanghai (2017); Forte di Belvedere, Florence, Italy (2015); Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, Switzerland (2014); Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia (2012); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany (2012); The State Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2010); Hayward Gallery, London (2007); Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (1993); and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (1989). Permanent public works include the Angel of the North (Gateshead, UK), Another Place (Crosby Beach, UK), Inside Australia (Lake Ballard, Western Australia), Exposure (Lelystad, Netherlands) and Chord (MIT – Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts).
Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and was made a knight in the New Year’s Honours list in 2014. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an Honorary Doctor of the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003.
Featured Works
Film
In The Studio: Antony Gormley, ‘Body Politic’
Conversation
Antony Gormley and Jacqueline Rose
In January 2024, Antony Gormley was joined in conversation with writer and scholar Jacqueline Rose at the Royal Academy of Arts, London.
Publication
Antony Gormley ‘Body Politic’ (2023)
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Antony Gormley
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