Over the past 20 years, the sculptor Antony Gormley has created some of the most memorable and controversial public art installations in Britain, the United States, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Mexico, Australia and China. His work has focused on the human figure and each piece is either cast directly from his own body or one of his volunteer models. He is best known for large-scale landscape interventions, such as Another Place, where 100 cast-iron figures are installed facing the horizon on the coastal mud-flats at Cuxhaven, Germany; The Angel of the North, commissioned by the city of Gateshead in England; and Inside Australia, where 51 sculptures were cast from the inhabitants of Menzies in western Australia, and set in 10 square kilometers of a dried lake. Gormley has also created many collaborative works in major public museum sites, such as the 190,000 figures in Asian Field and the 250 Domain sculptures made of stainless-steel bars commissioned by the Baltic art center in Gateshead, England. This catalogue raisonne is the definitive guide to Gormley's career. An extensive, large-format publication, it is the first major retrospective of his most significant works. Each chapter considers one of 25 projects in a comprehensive visual essay and a text written by the artist, explaining the genesis, creation, and installation of the work. An extended illustrated essay by the renowned political philosopher and writer Richard Noble will consider the development of Gormley's work, its place in the context of late twentieth-century sculpture, and the problematic use of his own body as a model for sculptural forms, as well as offering the first analysis of the political nature of his collaborative works.
