While laughing at the ludicrous but inspired Mother’s Pride—a wall of slices of bread that reveal the shape of a curled up person via half-eaten slices—I also mused on the problems that art conservators are likely to have in the future. I later read that Mother’s Pride was made at the height of the Cold War and is one of a range of pieces created from materials that we might use to protect ourselves from, or to survive, a nuclear attack – a much less palatable link to physics.
It was enjoyable clambering round and peering inside the works—so different from the passive gazing that we normally do. Outside the gallery I held the hand of one of the Event Horizon figures. It felt strange. All of these body forms are made from casts of the artist’s own body, so I was, in a way, holding Anthony Gormley’s hand – the hand of a man I’ll probably never meet.
The works described here can be viewed at www.antonygormley.com
© Institute of Physics 2007. Reproduced with permission.