Antony Gormley at the Hayward Gallery

I visited Antony Gormley’s new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery this afternoon (I did finish an assignment in the morning in case you get the wrong idea :-) I read some very good reviews and the exhibition was really mind blowing.

Antony Gormley’s main subject has always been the human body with his well-known installations, for eaxample the Angel of the North at Gateshead or his beach installations more recently. But with this exhibition he takes the concept to another level. His starting point is the relation of the human body (often his own in the exhibition) to different kinds of space: how does the body relate to architecture and the environment (e.g. in the installation Space Station which somehow resembles a Borg Cube)?

He also explores quite prominently in the main part of the exhibition the concept of disorientation: how do we react when we become disoriented? His installation Blind Light, the centrepiece of the show at the Hayward Gallery, is essentially a large glass cube filled with steam or clouds and which you can enter from one side. Think steam sauna without the heat. You walk in and immediately lose orientation because you cannot see but for about one metre around you. Everything is soaked in white light and a dense cloud. After a few minutes you become quite wet and feel that you should leave which is easier said than done because you will need to find the exit.

I experimented with photographing inside this space (my Leica compact camera became quite wet but survived, it’s a Leica after all :-) I went in twice but somehow felt a third time would be too much. My breathing became quite cumbersome after a few minutes inside. Gormley really succeeds in making people feel claustrophobic inside the cube.

There are also other installations, which are well worth exploring more, in particular Hatch and Matrices and Expansions.

I will certainly come back for a second time to this exhibition.