Interview with Antony Gormley / "The body can be filled with the sky. "

Antony Gormley is one of the most important artists in contemporary sculpture. Through the body, he has consistently explored the relationship between the human being and nature, space, and the cosmos. For Gormley, the question “What is sculpture?” is inseparable from the more fundamental question “What does it mean to be human?” He understands sculpture not as a mere object, but as a way of thinking through bodily presence and spatial experience, and believes that the very act of “making” forms the foundation of human history.

In Echigo-Tsumari, Gormley permanently installed Another Singularity (2009), created within a traditional Japanese house, and MAN: ROCK V (2024) at Kōryū Shrine, made from a stone taken from the Shinano River. In places where human activity and nature have intersected over long periods of time, he has developed works that connect the body, architecture, and landscape.
FILL marks his third work in this region. Cast from the artist’s own body and made of lead, this early work is a significant piece that reveals the origins of Gormley’s thinking. Focusing on the contrast between the darkness within the body and the sky and light that extend beyond it, the work challenges the upright, heroic figure typical of traditional sculpture and re-situates the body within its relationship to the earth and the planet. Even in an age of increasing virtualization, Gormley’s work quietly questions our relationship to the ground beneath our feet through sculpture as material presence.

Q: What does FILL mean to you, and why did you choose to present this work in Echigo-Tsumari?

Sculpture often attempts to mark a place by erecting something vertical that plugs into the sky. I want my work to engage with space at large and link body with ground. I hope that this work, FILL, suggests that the body can be filled with the sky. 

It is one of my earliest works in lead and was shown in my first gallery exhibition in New York at Salvatore Ala in 1984. Many of the early lead body-case works are pierced at vital thresholds. The previous three-part work, Three Calls: Pass Cast and Plumb, refers to the three primary means by which we explore the world: thought, word and action. This work, FILL, expresses a fundamental relation between perception and the elements.

Q: Do you see any conceptual or formal continuity or development among your three works in Echigo-Tsumari?

They all treat the location of human life, perception and feeling as an open space of unknowingness. They run contrary to the sculptural tradition that concentrated on how light reveals form, in favour of thinking of the space of being as one that is in continuity with space at large, always relating to the trace of a body rather than its representation.

Q: Could you share your impressions of your first visit to Echigo-Tsumari?

The whole experience of making Another Singularity (Japan), with the collaboration of the community and the kind family who bequeathed their house to the project, made a profound impression on me.

The memory of lying on the floor of that hand-built house with one of the daughters of the man who built it, staring up at the main pillar supporting the roof and being told the story of how that tree trunk had been brought down from the forest by hand by him and other members of the village, is unforgettable. The stories of how the family survived winters in which snowfall could reach as much as 6 metres – when they gave up using the ground floor door in favour of climbing in and out of the upper windows – have stayed with me.

I am amazed and inspired by the stories of life in the mountains of Niigata Prefecture and the resilience and creativity of the people of that north-western part of Honshu.

I love the ambition of the Echigo-Tsumari project, where art and reflexivity are interwoven with the human and built structures of the region. I regard it as a huge privilege to be part of it.

Q: Do you feel that your exploration of the relationship between the body, space, and nature resonates with the landscape and ways of life in Echigo-Tsumari?

Absolutely. As we move into an ever-more algorithmically controlled, internet-saturated world of digital communication, the reinforcement of first-hand, palpable experience is vital. I see my sculptures as reflexive instruments that allow us to sense anew our experience of being-in-the-world. Our bodies are primarily sensing instruments, part of a greater-than-human world in which everything is connected. It is only through our bodies and our animal nature that we can recognise our part in the entanglement of all life.

Q: You have said that “sculpture is a way of thinking about the world according to the principles of things.” In an age of increasing virtualization, what role and possibilities do you see for sculpture today?

Sculpture is a thing in the world of things. Sculpture reinforces being-in-the-world. In a time in which the visual is reinforced by instantly made images that are instantly obsolete, sculpture reinforces the palpable as the root of the intelligible.

I am committed to sculpture because it is not about making pictures of things but about making things that change a world made up of things. To make work that acts in and on the world rather than representing it is at the core of my purpose.