Liliana.
Azmi-Galoczi
Extras - Antony Gormley
ILO: 13/12/19
For this task, we will be exploring Antony Gormley’s Field for the British Isles, as well as discover other artists’ modern-styled works within the section.
Then we are all assigned to research further about Antony Gormley and his works.
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Through these multiple tasks, I will learn about the emotions that Gormley is trying to convey through his sculpted works about the world, emotions, and society through the observation of the human body.
Sir Antony Mark David Gormley is a British sculptor born in August 1950 known for powerful sculpting, installation art and public artworks. He’s famous for creating works of the Angel of the North, Another place on Crosby Beach, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site installation which premiered in London in 2007, around Madison Square in New York City, in 2010, in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 2012, and in Hong Kong in 2015-16.
In 2008 The Daily Telegraph ranked Gormley number 4 in their list of the “100 most powerful people in British culture”.
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Gormley’s career began with a solo exhibition at the Whitechapel; Art gallery in 1981. The majority of his work consists of the human body as the subject of his masterpieces. Because his art also conveys many senses of emotions in particular pieces, Gormley mainly describes his work as “an attempt to materialise the appearance where we all live.” And by his work based moulds taken from his own body, or “the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside.” His work attempts to treat the body not as an object but a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical - a trace of a real event of a real body in time. Another example of how Antony Gormley expresses place through the human body is by “here is this thing that I actually happen to inhabit, can I treat that as a found object?” And “can we use the privilege space of the statue to think about ourselves?” Which I think, yes, you can, through Gormley’s work. But his art isn’t always about place, they also show “vitality and consciousness are incarnated in the body” but through that, a place is seen and felt where “a sculpture can somehow just activate. It’s not about occupying or possessing or controlling space, it’s just about activating space, making it more alive.”.
Who is Antony Gormley?:
But an example of how he expresses and conveys emotion through his work by “I want to use the body as a found object” instead of a “manicured artwork” of the artists gaining pride and expressing the basics of expression to the viewers.
Through Gormley’s exhibition, he informs that “there is no pre-given or intrinsic value to anything in this show until the viewer arrives, which is also the arrival of the subject of the show because in the end, the viewer, singular, will be the subject of this show.” Which I agree, by Gormley expressing certain emotions in certain pieces of his art, he uses the viewers as their own subjects to reflect and think about themselves as they observe the meaningful piece
In one of his works, the Sleeping Field (2015-16), from a distance, it looks like an urban landscape of a city, until you walk up closer, and they’re actually people lying down in various positions, sleeping. It’s to give a meaning that “in a time which the majority of our species live within a constructed world. What can we say about human nature in a time of the mass organisation of humankind.” But the greatest and important definition of Sleeping Field is “yet we are all sleepwalking through” climate change and cities dominating over the world. “And it is urgent we wake up. We are sort of aware the centre cannot hold, that 250 years of industrial activity has undermined and fundamentally disturbed our world - yet we feel somehow not responsible.”.
Sleeping Field is inspired by the corporate expansion Gormley has witnessed in London, the city he has lived and worked in for most of his life. More than half the world is living in serviced urban environments, and he’s concerned about the impact this has on our collective imaginations. Gormley’s belief that we have all become “blind, sleeping servants” of a system that creates everything for us with ease and yet perpetuates social injustice and an unequal distribution of resources.
His hope is that Sleeping Field will force us all to take a necessary step back and realise “we are making the equivalent of a vast termites’ nest” and that “we are all participants in this process”.
How does he use his art to convey emotions?:
Another artwork of Antony Gormley’s is a rather simplistic process but it fascinated me over the complexity I saw over the simple piece in comparison to the other works that stand in high importance. Nevertheless, I couldn’t find a particular title of the work, but it consisted of a print of Gormley covering himself in crude oil mixed with other ingredients, and laid himself on the large paper. “The use of crude oil has been mixed with petroleum, jelly, and linseed oil, you know in different ways, these are all bodily fluids but of the planet.”. This work fascinated me by how Gormley conveyed the world with a print of body figure, but it shows how those ingredients are essential to us and we’re ruining the world, in reflection to the Sleeping Field.
On our school trip to Firstsite, we saw one of Antony Gormley’s major artwork, Field for the British Isles, which consisted of 40,000 tiny individual terracotta figures, created in 1993 with 100 volunteers. The largest single artwork in the Arts Council Collection.
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After being acquired by the Arts Council Collection in 1995, Field for the British Isles has been exhibited at a variety of venues across the UK, including Salisbury Cathedral, Greenesfield BR Works in Gateshead, The British Museum and Tate Liverpool. At each location, the configuration of Field is changed to suit the space, but the thousands of small figure looking directly at the viewer, waiting for instructions, but mouthless, because they cannot argue back.
Gormley said of the artwork: “thirty tonnes of clay energised by fire, sensitised by touch and made conscious by being given eyes … a field of gazes which looks at the observer making him or her its subject.” But it also celebrates community, individuality and togetherness.
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When Gormley was in production of this work, he worked with volunteers in China and in India, and have them instructions for the size and shape he wanted for the figures, even though they’re all made in varieties of sizes and minor change in colour, but that comes to show the diversity of people, but also an effect of shadow, to show a wave of people across the field, gazing intently at the observer.
As my specialist role of an artist, I personally would not influence from Antony Gormley’s art, as they’re mainly 3D and convey a serious, urban, dark atmosphere. Whereas my style of art is 2D, dynamic, fantasy and magic, and combat or teenage composure. As well as applying for the role of a concept artist in the art specialisms, I would find it difficult to use my inspirations from Gormley and apply it to the extended project as a concept artist.
However, supposedly I can apply expressions of emotions and deeper feelings with colours and positions in the art for the extended project to represent the character we will be making.
Field for the British Isles:
During our visit at Firstsite, we were free to explore the other artworks by other people. I took multiple photos of the pieces, but these were my favourites:
Cyberflower
Expanding Square Composition
This image of Cyberflower by Roman Verostko. Trying to find a meaning behind the artwork, it still caught my eye from its lovely simple fusion of orange and yellow in a graceful flow across the canvas. Here’s what was labelled next to the work:
Roman Verostko coined the term ‘cyberflower’ for a series of forms generated from a single survey line that repeats itself. This delicate plotter drawing shows two orange and yellow cyberflowers that overlap each other. Although the image appears to be tightly controlled, its design is influenced by random decisions taken by the artist’s bespoke software.
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I slightly disagree by “the image appears to be tightly controlled”. Personally I think it shows a flow of warmth. But supposedly, observing closer, the orange and yellow have an abrupt transition to each other. From orange to suddenly yellow, as well as how the art was created on the computer so perhaps it can feel “tightly controlled”.
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The next image is Expanding Square Composition by Damien Borowik. Just like Cyberflower, this art caught my attention by its beautiful fusion of blues in overlapping squares.
Despite its solid and tight edges of squares, the colours are pleasant with its variety of light blues and turquoise. It’s a modern piece of art, hence it can capture our eyes nowadays, because it’s new and clean, however, it’s like gazing at a clear, clean, blue shore - perhaps a metaphor with its modern design.
The label stated:
As a student at Goldsmiths, University of London, Damien Borowik saw a range of early computer artworks in the V&A collection. Inspired by the plotters used by digital pioneers, he went on to create his own hand-built drawing machines. Borowik’s machines hold a pen which is directed across the drawing surface by a computer program. As the results can vary, each drawing is unique.
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Looking through Borowik’s work through Google Images, he’s made more of these works and indeed “results can vary, each drawing is unique”.
Other artists' work:
Reference:
Bloomberg (2016) ‘The Body as a Found Object: Antony Gormley | Brilliant Ideas Ep. 40’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBK4RBRj1U8 [Accessed 12 January 2020].
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Canvas (2016) ‘ANTONY GORMLEY | CREATIVE MINDS’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oyj6qPN_JE [Accessed 12 January 2020].
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Royal Academy of Arts (2019) ‘Inside the show: Antony Gormley at the RA’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_L77CB9Fmc [Accessed 12 January 2020].
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Royal Academy of Arts (2019) ‘How it was made: Antony Gormley's Cave’ YouTube. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lc1gGAox5I [Accessed 12 January 2020].
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Hannah Ellis-Petersen (2016) Antony Gormley: Humans are building 'a vast termites' nest' of greed [Online]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jul/06/antony-gormley-humans-building-termites-nest-white-cube [Accessed 12 January 2020].
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Firstsite (1994) Antony Gormley: Field for the British Isles [Online]. Available from: https://firstsite.uk/event/antony-gormley-field/ [Accessed 12 January 2020].
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Antony Gormley: Field for the British Isles (2019-2020) [Exhibition]. Firstsite Gallery, Colchester. 15 November 2019 to 8 March 2020.
Chance & Control: Art in the Age of Computers – Created by the V&A – touring the nation. (2019-2020) [Exhibition]. Firstsite Gallery, Colchester. 26 October 2019 to 26 January 2020.
Maya production
ILO: 6/12/19
Despite how this task feels as if it continues from Task 1, but for students who chose art as one of their specialisms, like me, I will reflect on what I learnt in this final Maya (Autodesk Inc., 1998) task of modelling and sculpting a figure.
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In this task, I will learn how to move limbs of a human figure model, as well as how to implement an automatic human figure into the model to enable me to move its limbs and body parts.
For our last week of learning the essentials of Maya (Autodesk Inc., 1998), we learnt about rigging, which is a tool that implements a frame in an object to allow the ability for it to move and move specific areas in a position. Like applying bones to the object. This tool is majorly used for 3D animators to animate 3D characters and other dynamic features.
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We started off by creating a tall, slim cylinder to enable a successful bend in the middle as a basic form of a leg/wrist or elbow. However, with its default amount of subdivisions, the amount is not enough to smoothly bend the shape without creating odd and misshapen modification, so we heightened the subdivision height to twenty - as explained in the art tab of FutureProof - the tool added additional faces to the shape for a smoother bend, otherwise it would appear jagged.
After applying the subdivisions, we switched the overall program mode to rigging from modelling, which enabled us to successfully apply the rigging and bend and twist the shape in all places. Nevertheless, so we applied the rigging/joints into twos or threes - depending how long our cylinders were, but mine were enough for two. Carlie then demonstrated us that we can move an individual rig anywhere with the other rigs attached to it - therefore appearing stretched.
Then once applied, also ensuring that the joints are in the middle, we selected the entire object along with its rigs, selected skin then bind skin. This means that the object is now binded with its bones. Hence the name for skin binding - because it’s a connotation of how skin is binded together with bones inside. But in reality we need muscles.
Once selected and skin binded, we were then able to bend the object with the one of the selected rigs and twist and swing in angles. Unlike the other experiments, this highly interested me than the other lessons we learnt about Maya. But of course, we needed them first to have a background knowledge of the basics and essentials before being set off into the wild without knowing.
After the entertainment of moving the cylinder like and elbow, we then imported a model of a mannequin that Carlie provided us through email. She explained how there is an automatic tool that applies the skeleton of rigging for a human body. Therefore this a highly useful and efficient tool for 3D animators to quickly apply the skeleton of rigs to their character. However, if the character has unique limbs, for example a creature or a misshapen human, the program would not be able to apply the skeleton. Therefore, the animators would have to manually rig the characters - unless they can apply an automatic rigging for four-legged creatures with a plugin.
We imported the mannequin, and satisfyingly applied the skeleton of rigs to the figure. As we played around with its limbs, Carlie then introduced us to a method of animating. At the bottom of the program was the time frame, and she demonstrated the movement of the shoulder in one frame by pressing the key ‘s’, to the next position of the shoulder in another frame. As she dragged the time frame across the bar, the entire arm smoothly swung across to the front and this fascinated me further as I tried it myself.
Carlie then introduced us to another rigging session by downloading one of the 3D modellers work from the Sony animation website. It was an example work of a character from the Hotel Transylvania movie. The amount of colourful lines tangled all over the character shocked me, until I realised that it was for the use of animating to move specific parts of the body. For example, the eyes were bind into one tool, so when moving the tool, both eyes move simultaneously for efficient animating.
When I asked for help from Carlie at the beginning, because none of the body parts moved, she fixed it by switching the mode to animation and had an exploration session too. She started moving the jaw and tilted it to a side. It distinctly appeared like a professional process of animating the part of word that had the sound of ‘ohh’. This really captivated me seeing how that mouth position could replicate the visuals sounds of ‘ohh’.
Carlie also showed us another website, Mixamo (Adobe Inc., 2008), after reassuring us that indeed 3D animating takes ‘forever’ to produce - animating takes a long time in general - both 2D and 3D. However, Carlie presented a website, by Adobe, that consisted of 3D animation presets for animators to take reference from when animating. The presents included an enormous variety of all kinds of movements to walking, to a zombie dance or swinging and then landing.
This website would, very much, be useful for the extended project as it will consist of 3D modelling and then animation. Since we are all beginners to 3D modelling and animating, this website would be useful for us artists to use as reference when we struggle with anatomical positional movements.
Even though I’m specifically specialising in concept art, this will also be useful for me as I may be animating for the team to assist the flow of production.
Reference:
Autodesk, Inc. (1998) Maya [Computer program]. Available from: https://www.autodesk.com/education/free-software/maya [Downloaded by the college].
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Sony Pictures Animation (2002) HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA /SOFTWARE LICENSE [Online]. Available from: https://secure.sonypictures.com/animation/hotelt/zombierig/videosubmissions/ [Accessed 6 December 2019].
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Adobe (2008) Mixamo [Online]. Available from: https://www.mixamo.com/#/?page=1&type=Motion%2CMotionPack [Accessed 6 December 2019].