Antony Gormley - Blind Light

I took advantage of this bank holiday weekend’s miserable weather to do something indoors. I went to see Antony Gormley’s Blind Light exhibition at The Hayward Gallery.

If you’ve been out in central London recently you may have noticed a few of these fellows standing on roof tops along the banks of the Thames. What are they doing there?

The man in the picture is a part of Gormley’s Event Horizon exhibit, which takes his sculpture out of the gallery and into the real world. According to the exhibition guide there are 27 fibreglass and 4 cast iron figures dotted around various roof tops. I didn’t do a head count but I’m sure I didn’t see that many. Some of them are quite a long way off in the distance. They are all positioned facing the gallery.

OK, I said indoors … the rest of the exhibition is indoors. I didn’t want to spend too long outside getting wet looking for people standing on top of buildings.

Gormley’s most recent piece is Blind Light and is definitely one of the more unusual installations I have seen. It is a room within the gallery made of glass and filled with a thick, brightly lit white fog. Visibility is about two feet. You can shuffle round feeling the walls, or if you’re feeling brave, head out to the centre of the room. Within minutes I had no idea where I was, and as warned by the guidebook, was thoroughly disoriented. Apparently the artist’s intention was to make us “more conscious of our own body space as we cast blindly about.” It seemed to work!