Blind Light
Event Horizon - which is also a film with a soundtrack provided by Orbital
A fortnight ago we went to see Gormley’s Blind Light exhibition at The Hayward Gallery in at the Southbank Centre just before it closed.
Anthony Gormley is a sculptor who commands international respect, he’s one of our most significant artistic exports. On the way up to Newcastle I’ve seen his imposing Angel of the North - it’s a great icon for the re-branding of the north and a genuinely powerful symbol. A few years ago the British Museum showed Field for the British Isles, a Gormley installation which featured 40,000 little terracotta fellas moulded by local people. This room full of cute little chappies created a warm feeling, but I my limited impression of Gormley’s work is usually a bit cooler, more cerebral and even disembodied.
Walking into the Hayward exhibition, one is confronted by a huge metal structure composed of oblong steel shapes with grid-like holes cut into them. Called Space Station, it weighed a gigantic 27 tons and looking at it my first response was ‘how did they get this monster in here?’ The size and precarious angle of the sculpture made me a little worried in case it toppled over – it’d also make a good mincer. The hollow spaces in the centre looked like a good place to have tea, in fact the whole thing had a bit of the climbing frame about it. The sculpture’s vastness was made even bigger, because according to Gormley, this ‘large thing is itself a model for something much larger’ – presumably hanging in the icy void of space (or in our heads). Walking away, we were presented with a twist in the tail – its boxy chaos resolves itself into the suggestion of a figure hunched in the foetal position.
Closeby the installation that gave the exhibition its name silently gobbled people up. Blind Light is a large glass box filled with water vapour and illuminated by lights. I stepped into the glowing white cloud interior and immediately lost sight of everything - my body faded out after my ribcage and elbows. The effect is disorientating, after a few steps I was trying furiously to figure out the distance and direction I had come. It was like being stuck on a mountain-side when a cloud descends. The fog made me cough, which suddenly brought me back to myself. ‘Yes, here I was… coughing.’ I shuffled forwards with my hand about a foot ahead of me, only when I’d found the glass wall could I make my way out.
Autumn had said the piece made her feel like she was dead. I felt it was a bit like an inverse floatation tank, with white light rather than darkness. I left Blind Light enthralled, excited and a bit spaced out. Walking around in a white cloud is a forgetting. The installation also reminded a little of some of Anish Kapoor’s work I had seen in the Hayward a few years before: he had huge half-spheres, painted inside with Indian pigment. Staring into these balls was the most immediate work of art I have experienced. Rather than observing the colour, it saturated my experience, until there was only the colour left. I went gone blue (red and yellow) for a few moments, or rather there was only blue. The clouds similarly overwhelmed me.
After a seeing another exhibits downstairs we went to the upper floor where we were confronted by a queue. And as any Buddhist will tell you, as form is emptiness, emptiness is also form - and as there is (not) a void, there certainly is a whopping, glacially slow queue for Hatch which is a room with rods set into the inside walls that look into and out of it. By the time we eventually stepped into the installation, two by two, I think we’d transcended any interest in it.
I stepped out to clear my head and see Event Horizon, which consisted of numerous life sized human forms dotted on buildings around the gallery. It was fun to try and spot these little black specks against the setting sun. This array of people looking in our direction brought to mind the charmingly personal clay figurines of Field for Britain. ‘Hey guys, how’s it going?’ I wanted to shout.
The final room that made an impression on me was Matrices and Expansions - wire structures surrounding empty body shapes. These looked like representations of personal space around individuals or possibly condensed points within energy fields that had become formed into humans. Gormley says of this piece that these structures are ‘the closest I get to Brancusi’s notion that you can turn an object into light.’ Perhaps these sculptures then are the last embodied stage before the human form dissolves altogether, the last stop before blind light…
Tags: Anish Kapoor, Anthony Gormley, Blind Light, Event Horizon, Hayward Gallery