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HomeZZ - old posts archive (pre 2024)Art PreviewAntony Gormley: Field For The British Isles - St.Helens

Antony Gormley: Field For The British Isles – St.Helens

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Antony Gormley: Field For The British Isles
A Hayward Touring Exhibition from the Arts Council Collection

St.Helens College, St.Helens Town Centre
20 June – 23 August 2008

Field for the British Isles is one of Antony Gormley’s best-loved works of art featuring 40,000 clay figures. And now, Field returns for the first time to St.Helens, the town where it was created 15 years ago. The figures were handmade by 100 people, aged seven to seventy, at Sutton Manor High School in St.Helens in 1993, using local Ibstock clay.

Every time Field is exhibited it takes about a week to install with a team of local volunteers, which this time will include some of the original makers of the work. From 20 June to 23 August, Field will be shown in a specially constructed space within St.Helens College in the town centre.

Winner of the 1994 Turner Prize, Antony Gormley is renowned for his distinctive representations of the human form. Gormley has described Field as ‘… twenty-five tons of clay energised by fire, sensitised by touch and made conscious by being given eyes … a field of gazes which looks at the observer making him or her its subject’. This arresting installation comprises a sea of miniature terracotta figures, clustered together. Some stand out because of their size and character; others are greyer than the earthy reds of the majority: the overall sight is both captivating and mesmerising.

In 1995 Field was purchased by the Arts Council Collection with the support of the Henry Moore Foundation and the National Art Collections Fund. Since its acquisition Field has been seen by nearly 400,000 visitors in Aberystwyth, Carlisle, Colchester, Gateshead, Gloucester, Lincoln, London, Salisbury, Sheffield, Shrewsbury, Wakefield and St Ives, in venues as diverse as a train-shed, a church, a cathedral, a gallery, and a warehouse.

This exhibition is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the Merseyside Objective One Programme.

St.Helens College
Town Centre Campus
Brook Street
WA10 1PZ

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