Antony Gormley artwork on display at Wolfson

Published on
Tuesday 14 June 2016
Category
Art & Humanities

The artwork has been loaned from a private collection in addition to the painting by Anselm Kiefer and the sculpture by Marc Quinn in the Marble Hall. This installation is one of several new artworks on display for Wolfson College's 50th Anniversary, building on Wolfson's reputation for supporting and showcasing modern art.

Entitled Insider VIII/Weeds 1, the sculpture is part of the INSIDER series made by Antony Gormley in the late 1990s. Each sculpture in the series was constructed of iron and the male forms are 2/3 reductions of Gormley's own body, explaining the narrow limbs and torsos.

“An INSIDER is to the body what memory is to consciousness: a kind of residue, something that is left behind. It is a core rather than a skeleton. It is a way of allowing things that are internal to the body - attitudes and emotions embedded in posture or hidden by gesture - to become revealed. They are equally alien and intimate.” Text from Antony Gormley's website

Antony Gormley is perhaps best known for his iron sculpture work in human form, such as the Angel of the North, 1998 near Gateshead in Northern England and a series of figures staring out to sea entitled Another Place, 1997 at Crosby Beach near Liverpool. Several of his works are on display in Oxford, such as Another Time II at Exeter College (located above Blackwell's Art and Poster Shop on the corner of Turl and Broad Streets), and Present Time, 2001 in the grounds of Mansfield College.

“I want them to endure in time and concentrate space. They are made in a durable and relatively permanent base element: iron. The earth has iron at its core and these are like the cooled and revealed magnetic load cores of the body.” Text from Antony Gormley's website