A Fair Field Full of Folk
Aug. 4th, 2021 08:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustLong ago, when the Angel of the North was still a not-altogether-popular proposal for which Gateshead council was engaged in a charm offensive, durham_rambler and I went to see Antony Gormley's Field for the British Isles, in what I remember as an ill-lit engine shed somewhere in Gateshead: thousands of little clay homunculi staring up at us out of the gloom. Since then it has won the Turner Prize, and the Angel has become not just a National Treasure but a local hero as well - and the Field for the British Isles is paying a return visit to the north east. So yesterday we went to the Sunderland Glass Centre, to see it again.
You book a ten-minute slot (for up to six people), and when it's your time, you are admitted to a dimly lit corridor at the back of the café. I don't know whether this way of portioning out the time is simply a way to avoid having a queue during the pandemic, but it creates a certain mystique, which I liked. You then have ten minutes alone with a member of museum staff and some 40,000 tiny figures not quite spilling out of the brightness of a side gallery:
They entirely fill the room, lapping up against the walls and forming a neat tideline across the doorway. You can see them as a sort of carpet, with patches where the clay is a slightly different colour: the representatives of the Arts Council who supervised the installation agreed where these shouls appear, and sketched outlines on the floor for guidance. (I asked.) I tried to take a photograph showing the overall effect, but I'm not happy with it, so try to imagine it from this general picture and the words!
And finally, zooming in on the little meerkat models:
There's some interesting background here, about Gormley's Fields series and how they are made. I know that sculptors, even more than other artists, hand over their work to be cast or otherwise executed, but I'm still disconcerted by the almost industrial process going on here. It's as if the act of creation is not in the making of the object before me, but in the marshalling of the people who will make the figures. A piece of conceptual art, I suppose. And not a particularly aesthetic experience, but a pleasant way to spend ten minutes.
After which we ordered a pot of Earl Grey tea each to drink at the café's outdoor tables, and I stocked up on cards from the gift shop while I waited for it to arrive.
durham_rambler and I went to see Antony Gormley's Field for the British Isles, in what I remember as an ill-lit engine shed somewhere in Gateshead: thousands of little clay homunculi staring up at us out of the gloom. Since then it has won the Turner Prize, and the Angel has become not just a National Treasure but a local hero as well - and the Field for the British Isles is paying a return visit to the north east. So yesterday we went to the Sunderland Glass Centre, to see it again.You book a ten-minute slot (for up to six people), and when it's your time, you are admitted to a dimly lit corridor at the back of the café. I don't know whether this way of portioning out the time is simply a way to avoid having a queue during the pandemic, but it creates a certain mystique, which I liked. You then have ten minutes alone with a member of museum staff and some 40,000 tiny figures not quite spilling out of the brightness of a side gallery:
They entirely fill the room, lapping up against the walls and forming a neat tideline across the doorway. You can see them as a sort of carpet, with patches where the clay is a slightly different colour: the representatives of the Arts Council who supervised the installation agreed where these shouls appear, and sketched outlines on the floor for guidance. (I asked.) I tried to take a photograph showing the overall effect, but I'm not happy with it, so try to imagine it from this general picture and the words!
And finally, zooming in on the little meerkat models:
There's some interesting background here, about Gormley's Fields series and how they are made. I know that sculptors, even more than other artists, hand over their work to be cast or otherwise executed, but I'm still disconcerted by the almost industrial process going on here. It's as if the act of creation is not in the making of the object before me, but in the marshalling of the people who will make the figures. A piece of conceptual art, I suppose. And not a particularly aesthetic experience, but a pleasant way to spend ten minutes.
After which we ordered a pot of Earl Grey tea each to drink at the café's outdoor tables, and I stocked up on cards from the gift shop while I waited for it to arrive.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-04 09:55 pm (UTC)It would be great if they had a footpath through them so you could walk among them.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-05 10:41 am (UTC)Gormley states that he wanted to make a work about the human collective future and responsibility for it. His artwork aimed to look back on its makers and the viewers as if they are all responsible for the world.
Which, umm...
It's clearly quite intentional that there is no path, you can only look at them from outside - the advance information is explicit about this, so I guess they get asked a lot.
I don't know whether I like them or not. Interesting, but compared to your drowned palace ...
no subject
Date: 2021-08-05 11:58 am (UTC)I suppose/guess maybe they're afraid that if they made such a path, there could be an accident (people might stumble and step on one, something like that) that would damage the display. Or maybe they're afraid people would try to snatch one. Still, especially if you want to comment on the human collective future--well, I think I would have been tempted to make a different decision, even granting the risks.
no subject
Date: 2021-08-05 02:07 pm (UTC)That's a very practical reason for not allowing people to walk through the 'field': I thought of it as maintaining boundaries between the viewer and the viewed (us and them?) ...
no subject
Date: 2021-08-15 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-15 07:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-08-15 09:59 am (UTC)