Categories: uncategorized
Date: 20 July 2007 14:36:54
Yes, it was weeks ago. Or at least it feels like it, because other stuff has happened since. But anyway, yes, we went to London (via Slough) to see the Gormley exhibition at the Hayward.
I find it a bit difficult to write about some of this stuff as I am a bit concerned I sound like I'm talking out of some orifice other than my mouth - I know mr b (who did enjoy it, by the way) thinks so when I get going! It has to be said I can bullsh*t with the best of them when it comes to talking about contemporary art - an art history degree enables you to do that, I find - but I really, genuinely like Antony Gormley's stuff, and I'm not intending to be pretentious about it at all. Which probably makes me very pretentious indeed, but ho hum.
I think this is probably because one of Antony Gormley's major preoccupations is the way our bodies occupy space, and this is a preoccupation I share. So the pieces which are mostly about this are ones I find it very easy to connect with, without any explanation - I'm not busily reading the exhibition guide to find out what I ought to think about it.
So, the three things I liked best were:
Blind Light
This is the thing you've probably seen pictures of on the news & in the papers if you've seen anything about the exhibition - the glass room filled with fog. Firstly, I could.not.believe. how thick they'd managed to make that fog, you looked from the outside and thought, 'yeah I'll be able to negotiate my way around in there'. It was so think you couldn't see your feet: unbelievable. So if there was no-one near enough for you to see them, the effect was like floating alone in this bright white cloud. As you looked around you, the fog could have extended forever in every direction for all you knew. It muffled sound a lot so although you were aware of the sounds of other people, it didn't feel like being in a room with 20 other people. (It struck me afterwards that he could have intensified the effect by having white noise in the room as well, but I think that would actually have tipped it over the edge from interesting into unpleasant.) Anyway the effect of this (for me, anyway) was that you became very aware of your body, and of the risk of bumping into someone as they lurched at you out of the fog. In a way it made you aware of the edges of your body, if that makes sense, as they were the only edges you could see (unless you were clinging to the glass wall and following it around). When I said this to mr b over dinner later he looked at me like I'd sprouted a second head, so I do feel slightly self conscious about describing it to you in case it is, in fact, just me!
Hatch
I'd read about this one and I think I got my hopes up a bit as I was a little bit disappointed by it, although it was still quite interesting. This was another room, which had aluminium rods sticking into it, from the floor, walls and ceiling. The rods are of different lengths and not in any regular pattern so you have to find your way through it avoiding poking yourself in the eye, hitting your head, tripping over and generally impaling yourself. The rods are also hollow so from the outside of the room you can look through them and see fleeting glimpses of the people inside (only 2 allowed in at a time). Again, it made you very aware of your body in space as you felt your way around. My disappointment I think was becuase although I could see what he was getting at, I didn't feel it so much as in Blind Light. It was actually quite easy to get around it. I suppose that for a space like that to really make you feel like you had to very carefully negotiate your way through it, the room would be quite dangerous - you're less likely to get a piece shown if you're saying to the gallery 'yes, in this one the viewer has to negotiate their way through a space with thousands of pointy sharp bits sticking into it. There are so many that they will have to contort themselves around it in places, and someone is likely to lose an eye. It might be good if you get them to sign a disclaimer.' That's not really going to fly is it?
Event Horizon
This is the one with 31 life size figures placed on the tops of buildings around the gallery. They are all casts of Antony Gormley's body, and they are all in identical poses, facing the gallery. Once in the exhibition you can see them from viewing galleries but it is also lots of fun to spot them as you wander round that bit of London. It was fairly drizzly and dull when we were there, and I'm fairly sure we couldn't see all of them. I am going to be pretentious now, I think: it's occurred to me that while Blind Light and Hatch make you aware of your body by putting it within a certain space, Event Horizon makes you aware of the space by putting a body within it (sorry: I've got that out of my system now). Looking for all the figures made me aware of the shape of the skyline in a way I hadn't been before. It also made me realise that my perception of space and distance appear to be completely screwed - there was one figure in particular I couldn't believe was actually lifesize, it looked so big from where we were. And the ones on buildings which seemed really far away were still easy to spot, and much bigger than I would have imagined them to appear. But they are all lifesize, and that made me reassess the scale of some of the buildings, if that makes any sense at all. I know a lot of people have felt that this one made them feel very much like they were being watched, as all the figures are facing the gallery. I didn't feel that so much although it is something Gormley is good at - I remember when I went to see Field for the British Isles ages ago, it did make me feel that all those little figures were looking at me. I thought at the time that someone of a paranoid disposition would probably find that a very uncomfortable thing to be faced with.
Anyway there we are. Sorry if that was all nonsense as far as you are concerned - but I promise I'm not trying to sound clever or anything, those are just the things I liked best and what I thought about them, and probably not very clever at all.
By the way, when I was talking to mr b about the whole 'perception of how our bodies occupy space' thing, he really didn't get what I was talking about at all. For me, this was a bit of a discovery as I assumed that everyone had similar feelings about it. I'm not going to expand on that now as I've just realised how long this post is, but I'm interested to know if anyone reading this knows the sort of thing I mean. I've deliberately left that vague, and I'll read responses and put more later.
If you have made it to the end of this post: I salute you!