Another Place is a piece of modern sculpture

Sculpture

Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

 by Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley

Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in the North of England, commissioned in 1995 and erected in February 1998, Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site...

.

Now permanently erected on Crosby Beach

Crosby Beach

Crosby Beach is part of the Merseyside coastline north of Liverpool in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, England.-Overview:The beach stretches about 3 miles North-West from the Seaforth Dock in the Port of Liverpool, through Waterloo, where it separates the sea from the Marina, past Crosby...

, England, it was due to be moved to New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 in November 2006, but there was a controversial proposal to retain the work at Crosby. It was stated in the local paper, the Crosby Herald, that they may stay for a decade, but at a meeting on 7 March 2007, Sefton Council

Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council

Sefton Council is the governing body for the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, north-western England. The council has been under no overall control since the 1980s and is run as an all party coalition of the Liberal Democrats, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party, It consists of...

 accepted proposals that would allow the sculptures to be kept permanently at Crosby Beach.

Details

The sculpture consists of 100 cast iron

Cast iron

Cast iron is derived from pig iron, and while it usually refers to gray iron, it also identifies a large group of ferrous alloys which solidify with a eutectic. The color of a fractured surface can be used to identify an alloy. White cast iron is named after its white surface when fractured, due...

 figures which face out to sea, spread over a 2 mile (3.2 km) stretch of the beach between Waterloo and Blundellsands

Blundellsands

Blundellsands or Blundell Sands is an area of Merseyside, England in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton, and a Sefton council electoral ward...

. Each figure is 189 cm tall (nearly 6 feet 2½ inches) and weighs around 650 kg (over 1400 lb).

In common with most of Gormley's work, the figures are cast replicas of the artist's own body. As the tides ebb and flow, the figures are revealed and submerged by the sea. The figures were cast at two foundries, Hargreaves Foundry in Halifax, West Yorkshire

Halifax, West Yorkshire

Halifax is a minster town, within the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England. It has an urban area population of 82,056 in the 2001 Census. It is well-known as a centre of England's woollen manufacture from the 15th century onward, originally dealing through the Halifax Piece...

 and Joseph and Jesse Siddons Foundry in West Bromwich

West Bromwich

West Bromwich is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands, England. It is north west of Birmingham lying on the A41 London-to-Birkenhead road. West Bromwich is part of the Black Country...

.

Another Place was first exhibited on the beach of Cuxhaven, Germany in 1997 and after that in Stavanger

Stavanger

Stavanger is a city and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Stavanger municipality has a population of 126,469. There are 197,852 people living in the Stavanger conurbation, making Stavanger the fourth largest city, but the third largest urban area, in Norway...

 in Norway and De Panne

De Panne

De Panne is a municipality located along the North Sea coast of the Belgian province of West Flanders. The municipality comprises the towns of Adinkerke and De Panne proper. On 1 January 2006 De Panne had a total population of 10,060. The total area is 23.90 km² which gives a population...

 in Belgium.

Public reception

Another Place is a subject of local controversy in Merseyside. Some consider the statues to be "pornographic" due to the inclusion of a simplified penis on the statues, whilst others see them as beautiful pieces of art which have brought increased tourism revenue to the local area.

Originally the statues were due to be relocated in November 2006. Those who use the front for watersports voice the strongest resistance to the iron men staying, as the statues do pose a safety problem - especially as the local marina is being closed to public use. Art lovers and local businesses are lobbying for the statues to stay. Gormley himself agrees with the proposal to keep the statues at Crosby Beach, saying that the current location is "ideal".
The works, which had earlier been displayed in Germany, Norway and Belgium, became a major tourist attraction on Crosby Beach north of Liverpool

Liverpool

Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...

.

As of March 2007 permission was granted to have Another Place permanently installed at Crosby.
Initially, coastguard authorities expressed safety fears, saying people could become stuck in soft sand and be cut off by the tide when viewing the statues up close.

Conservationists had also complained that bird-feeding areas had been compromised by the extra tourist traffic. Other biologists from the University of Liverpool used the statues as an opportunity to look at the colonisation of the statues by sessile intertidal organisms, such as barnacles.

In October 2006, the local council refused permission for the statues to stay, prompting Gormley to criticise what he called Britain's "risk-averse culture." He said "When I have been down on the beach myself, the majority of people have been intrigued, amused, sometimes very moved," he said.

Another Body Place Ltd, a body set up to campaign for the permanent installation, helped to convince the council to change its mind.

Graham Haywood, Chief Executive of Sefton Council, said in a statement "Despite some controversy, this internationally renowned artwork has aroused national and international public and media support." Saying that "The Iron Men have placed Crosby and Sefton firmly in the spotlight and the knock-on benefits of this should be felt for years to come."

The planning committee decided to move 16 of the statues back away from an area used by small sailing craft. Three others are being re-sited away from bird feeding areas. The work on the 16 started on 16 July 2007 and the plan is to put them in storage and return them in 2008. The full cost is expected to be £194,000 which will be paid for by Another Place Ltd, with funding coming from sources including The Northern Way

The Northern Way

The Northern Way is a 20 year British governmental strategy to transform the economy of the North of England. It aims to bridge a £30 billion output gap between the North and the average for England....

 and Northwest Development Agency.

On the 14 February 2008, five of the statues were used in a costume design project by Edge Hill University

Edge Hill University

Edge Hill University is situated in Ormskirk, Lancashire, England. It has three faculties: Education, Health and Social Care, and Arts and Sciences.- History :...

 students. This involved dressing the statues in various items of clothing replicating different costumes and periods, which were then removed as the tide came in.

Time Horizon

A second set of the same 100 figures were cast in 2006 for a new installation called Time Horizon

Time horizon

A time horizon, also known as a planning horizon, is a fixed point of time in the future at which point certain processes will be evaluated or assumed to end. It is necessary in an accounting, finance or risk management regime to assign such a fixed horizon time so that alternatives can be...

installed amongst a grove of olive tree

Olive Tree

The Olive Tree was a denomination used for several successive centre-left Italian political coalitions from 1995 to 2007.The historical leader and ideologue of these coalitions was Romano Prodi, Professor of Economics and former leftist Christian Democrat, who invented the name and the symbol of...

s at the Archaeological Park of Scolacium near Catanzaro in Calabria

Calabria

Calabria , in antiquity known as Bruttium, is a region in southern Italy, south of Naples, located at the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula. The capital city of Calabria is Catanzaro....

, Southern Italy. Since the figures are set into the ground, facing a variety of directions, the effect of the piece is very different from that of Another Place.

Event Horizon

Event Horizon consists of 31 statues placed on buildings around London.

External links

• One of the first photographs on Gormley's Flash-only web site shows Another Place in Cuxhaven, and it is also included as item 350 in his List of Works.
• Guardian article on Another Place and Gormley
• Liverpool Echo report on plans to retain Another Place at Crosby