Making art is on one level simply a therapeutic action, trying to heal ones own anxiety, Gormley says. But at the same time the artwork tries to transfer the personal truth into a universal one, creating hope that the existential questions which the artist seeks to answer are relevant to mankind in general. When you make things without a practical function, you do it because you believe it will change the world somehow, like when you add a smell in the air, or a note into a soundscape – a widening and deepening kind of change, Gormley explains.

“Any notion of me or mine is simply an inaccurate reflection of the truth of the fact that we are all part of bigger systems, the truth of which we will never know. The more we know, the more we realize that we don’t know. Which I think reinforces the imperative to experience rather than simply think in language.” Gormley says. Although he now works with “a family of helping hands” Gormley’s work still deals with the same things: The human shape and presence in the world, exploring the space we feel within our own bodies as well as the space around us, never forgetting that we are simply dots in space and time. The 400 kg iron sculptures seen in the video are “three dimensional maps of a human space in space, but described in the language of architecture” while another piece is described as a human body version of the big bang.

The biggest challenge is to really listen to what the last artwork you made is trying to tell you, and to make the next step without knowing the next step of your journey, but believing that the work will take you somewhere new and exiting, says Gormley.

Antony Gormley (b.1950) is a British sculptor. His most famous work includes the “the Angel of the North” near Newcastle upon Tyne, and “Event Horizon”, a multi-part site installation which premiered in London in 2007, around Madison Square in New York City, in 2010 and in São Paulo, in 2012. Gormley studied archaeology, anthropology and the history of art at Trinity College, Cambridge, attended Saint Martin’s School of Art and Goldsmiths in London from 1974, completing his studies with a postgraduate course in sculpture at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College, London, in 1979. In 1994 Gormley won the Turner Prize.

Antony Gormley was interviewed by Nathaniel Budzinski at Gormley’s studio factory in London.

Camera: Bartek Dziadosz
Edited by: Nathaniel Budzinski
Produced by: Christian Lund
Music by: Ekkehard Ehlers, Cindytalk and Scald Rougish
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2013.

Supported by Nordea-fonden