Dec 11, 2024

Iron man

Gormley’s Another Time X transports the artist to Toronto as part of Light Years: The Phil Lind Gift

free standing cast iron sculpture of an anonymous human man

Antony Gormley, Another Time X, 2008. Edition 5/5 + 1 AP. Cast iron, 191 x 59 × 36 cm. Art Gallery of Ontario, Gift of the Estate of Philip B. Lind, 2024. 2024/45. © Antony Gormley. Photo © Stephen White. Courtesy White Cube.

Renowned for creating works based on his own body, English sculptor Antony Gormley (b. 1950) has come to the AGO as part of the exhibition Light Years: The Phil Lind Gift. This unique physical manifestation comes through two artworks – a concrete sculpture entitled Room II (1987) designed to contain his own body at its most compact, and Another Time X (2008), one in a series of 100 identical life-sized, three-dimensional casts molded from his own body.

Lacking the distinguishing details typical of self-portraiture, Another Time X stands firmly on its own two feet, an arresting and universal everyman figure. Made of cast iron, a material synonymous with mass production, and that which is elemental, the sculpture bears the marks of its creation, with visible joint lines making it possible to see where the plaster mold was divided and reassembled for casting. Its patina is weathered and rusting, showing evidence of exposure.

In enclosing, multiplying, and dispersing his body, Gormley explores the space a body takes up and its relationship to the world around it. It is a line of inquiry that dates to his studies in archaeology and art history at Cambridge University and Buddhist meditation in India and Sri Lanka.

“The work asks where the human being sits within the scheme of things,” Gormley said in 2008. “Each work is necessarily isolated and is an attempt to bear witness to what it is like to be alive, alone in space and time.”

The 100 sculptures that make up the Another Time series are identical to those in the related work Another Place (1997), a now permanent installation of one hundred cast-iron figures facing the sea on Crosby Beach, Merseyside, near Liverpool, England.

photo of Antony Gormley sculptures installed along shoreline looking out to sea

Antony Gormley, Another Place, 1997. Cast iron, 189 x 53 x 29 cm (100 elements), installed Crosby Beach, Merseyside, England, 2005. Photograph by Stephen White & Co.

Generously gifted to the AGO by the Estate of Phil Lind, Room II and Another Time X are welcome additions to the AGO’s collection of modern and contemporary sculpture. Installed mere steps away from the Henry Moore Sculpture Centre, the Frum Collection of African Art, and Zak Ové's monumental Moko Jumbie (2021), Gormley’s presence offers visitors yet another vantage point from which to consider how the body can be made visible.

Light Years: The Phil Lind Gift is on view through November 2, 2025, on Level 2 of the AGO.