Event Horizon (sculpture)
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England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
artist 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...
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Originally mounted in London in 2007, the project consists of 31 life-size anatomically-correct male bodies, 27 constructed of fiberglass and four of cast iron, all cast from the body of the artist himself. which were placed on top of prominent buildings along the London's South Bank
South Bank
South Bank is an area of London, England located immediately adjacent to the south side of the River Thames. It forms a long and narrow section of riverside development that is within the London Borough of Lambeth to the border with the London Borough of Southwark and was formerly simply known as...
–
for example the Shell Building and Waterloo Bridge
Waterloo Bridge
Waterloo Bridge is a road and foot traffic bridge crossing the River Thames in London, England between Blackfriars Bridge and Hungerford Bridge. The name of the bridge is in memory of the British victory at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815...
. Part of Gormley's 2007 retrospective exhibition Blind Light at the Hayward Gallery
Hayward Gallery
The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre, part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames, in central London, England. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings and also the Royal National Theatre and British Film Institute...
, it was best viewed from the gallery's terraces. One of the figures was featured in the opening credits of the first episode of Ashes to Ashes
Ashes to Ashes (TV series)
Ashes to Ashes is a British science fiction and police procedural drama television series, serving as the sequel to Life on Mars.The series began airing on BBC One in February 2008. A second series began broadcasting in April 2009...
. The statues were occasionally mistaken as suicide attempts. The installation was taken down in August and September 2007. Gormley had previously constructed a similar project, Another Place
Another Place
Another Place is a piece of modern sculpture by Antony Gormley.Now permanently erected on Crosby Beach, England, it was due to be moved to New York in November 2006, but there was a controversial proposal to retain the work at Crosby...
, in 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...
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In 2010, the Event Horizon sculptures were installed in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
at sites around Madison Square
Madison Square
Madison Square is formed by the intersection of Fifth Avenue and Broadway at 23rd Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The square was named for James Madison, fourth President of the United States and the principal author of the United States Constitution.The focus of the square is...
, as far downtown as Union Square
Union Square (New York City)
Union Square is a public square in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York.It is an important and historic intersection, located where Broadway and the former Bowery Road – now Fourth Avenue – came together in the early 19th century; its name celebrates neither the...
and as far uptown as the Empire State Building
Empire State Building
The Empire State Building is a 102-story landmark skyscraper and American cultural icon in New York City at the intersection of Fifth Avenue and West 34th Street. It has a roof height of 1,250 feet , and with its antenna spire included, it stands a total of 1,454 ft high. Its name is derived...
. As in London, the 27 fiberglass figures were placed on setbacks and tops of buildings, while the four cast iron figures were on the ground in Madison Square Park. The installation was sponsored by the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Also as in London, the figures were mistaken as suicide attempts.
Gormley said of the London installation that "it was great to see an individual or groups of people pointing at the horizon. This transfer of the stillness of sculpture to the stillness of an observer is exciting to me: reflexivity becoming shared." Of the New York site he said that "Within the condensed environment of Manhattan's topography, the level of tension between the palpable, the perceivable and the imaginable is heightened because of the density and scale of the buildings" and that in this context, the project should "activate the skyline in order to encourage people to look around. In this process of looking and finding, or looking and seeking, one perhaps re-assess one's own position in the world and becomes aware of one's status of embedment." Critic Howard Halle said of it that "Using distance and attendant shifts of scale within the very fabric of the city, [Event Horizon] creates a metaphor for urban life and all the contradictory associations – alienation, ambition, anonymity, fame – it entails."