Antony Gormley, Turner Prize winner and one of the most celebrated artists
working in Britain today, is preparing for a forthcoming, groundbreaking
show at the Hayward Gallery in London. He has been followed for the past
nine months by the lens of a close friend and neighbour, the documentary
film-maker Beeban Kidron, for a portrait of the artist to be shown on
Channel 4 next month. They met in Gormley’s studio to talk about the show
and about putting the artist in the television spotlight.
Joanna Pitman How did you two meet?
Beeban Kidron We lived next door to each other. The day I moved into
our house, Vicken [Parsons, the painter], Antony’s other half, saw me with
my boxes, and she said “Oh we’re having a party, would you like to come?” It
was nine years ago.
Antony Gormley Was it really? Bloody hell!
JP Antony, your show at the Hayward is named after an installation
called Blind Light. Can you explain what it is?
AG It’s a glass box with a cloud. It’s very bright inside, so bright
you sort of need dark glasses, and you go inside and you go into this cloud
of 100 per cent humidity. If it works, you won’t be able to see your hand.
It’s a kind of social experiment. The idea of separating people from all the
things that make them certain about where they are or maybe who they are. So
you have this paradoxical situation of being in a very luminous space but at
the same time being able to see nothing, no coordinates, no nothing.
BK The joy of it is that you find yourself asking questions, and the
liberation is the delight that you feel. I haven’t been in the real thing
yet, but I went in with my camera into a small version with Antony. I
immediately lost him, and then he came out of the cloud towards me.
AG You can talk in there – you’re actually quite close, but you have
all these disembodied voices.
BK I think what’s really interesting is the way that these very simple
things are quite transforming. Quite emotive.
AG If you’re at a very emotional and vulnerable stage of your life,
when you’re scared of what might happen, I think you’re going to get more
scared, but if you’re not, you may feel how you do waking up one morning and
discovering that it’s snowed.
BK That would be my feeling, just that. A morning when it’s snowed, not
only do you get out of bed, but you shake everybody else out of bed, shaking
the children awake, with the joy and the excitement, and the feeling that
I’ve got to go into a London street and throw a snowball.
AG But the technical staff, they’ve seen a lot – the excitements of
artists over the years on projects – but it was just very very nice what
happened with them, because they went in together one night and they all
came out giggling.
BK It’s a very giggly thing.
JP This box is still in an experimental stage with only a few weeks to
go before the opening. And you haven’t yet completed planning permission for
your installation Event Horizon, where there will be human figures
placed on buildings around the Hayward Gallery. How can you take these
risks?
AG [Big defiant smile] I have to. For Event Horizon, there are
four figures which you will be able to touch as you pass by on Waterloo
Bridge, and they will interact with the daily tide to do with commuting in
and out of the city. And then there will be more figures placed on the roofs
of buildings surrounding the Hayward Gallery. If we get planning permission
it will be fantastic, because it will invite people to look again at this
built environment that surrounds us, which we take for granted, but which we
made. All the figures face the Hayward, and in a way you are then at the
centre of a concentrating lens. There will be this feeling that you are at
the epicentre of a world that is in some way looking at you. If we get
permission . . .
BK That’s the other thing that’s been part of the last nine months of
making this film: the all-end-in-tears element. In the last few months
Antony seems not to have just done one big new work, but several big new
works, where it would have been very easy to do “the best of”. I’ve actually
watched him deny himself that safety net.
AG [Shouting and leaping to his feet] But hang on. I think you can
overegg this. Anyone who wants to do things on a certain scale has to push.
And the truth is that I have an enormous admiration for the amount of
politicking and sheer tactical ingenuity that people like Beeban have to put
in to bloody well make a damn film.
JP Beeban, what are the most interesting parts of your film?
BK I was filming when the Crosby Beach planning permission issue broke
[when Gormley’s group of human figures known as Another Place were
initially refused permission to remain on Crosby Beach, Merseyside], and in
the film you see Antony absolutely refusing to accept it, and immediately
beginning a huge fight to win permission back. There’s the assumption that
if you are someone of stature who is known in the world, then it’s all very
easy – you know, you’re all right if you’re Antony Gormley. But actually
what you see is the continual effort to make something in your own image,
and I would say that is the single thing you find across the creative
disciplines. You get all the same sets of resistance to projects that have
an act of imagination, rather than an act of commerce. You have to sound
absolutely sure that it’s worth doing, even if you’re not absolutely sure
yourself.
AGThe question of giving up is not ever a possibility. I think
resistance is very important. It’s something to do with forming the resolve.
The fighting I’ve had with the f****** Hayward, about f****** health and
safety and risk assessment. I could kill them. I really could kill them.
BK And yet they’re having this exhibition with two pieces that they
have no idea what they’re going to be.
AG They’ve accepted it.
JP What have you enjoyed about making the film?
BK One of the most fun things was going with him to the British Museum
for the first time. He said to me: “Nobody can not be touched by the British
Museum.” And I was standing there thinking I feel like a kid in this place.
I don’t understand anything. And he managed to explain to me what sculpture
was, the difference between Egyptian and Persian sculptures. He turned me
round from thinking I’m uneducated to being excited and interested.
AG But that’s a failure of the museum if you feel the only reason you
go is to be educated. I’ve never felt that. I don’t know if it was just my
nerdy nature or whether it was my dad. I always thought of museums being a
bit like my mum’s attic, that there are things in there that tell you about
where you are in the world that you landed in, so it’s a sort of place of
wonder.
BK Watching him in the British Museum was like watching an 11-year-old
at Alton Towers!
JP Antony, did you enjoy having a film made about you?
AG We have been quite well behaved because we’re friends, and there is
something more at stake than the film. I was just very concerned that we
didn’t fall into the trap of turning from the art to the artist. You know,
it’s easy to say, ‘Here’s this bloke; he can’t help it because he’s a bit
psychotic’. That too easily separates the creativity that lies in everyone.
I do believe that the point of all of this is to say that anybody can do
anything that they want. We all have this potential.
Antony Gormley: Blind Light is at the Hayward Gallery
(www.southbankcentre.co.uk) May 17-August 19. Antony Gormley: Making
Face, directed by Beeban Kidron, is on Channel 4 on May 12 at 8pm
