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Antony Gormley

Living · British · born 1950 · London

Antony Gormley

Antony Gormley in September 2024. The file is dated 4 September 2024 at 20:18, the evening of the announced 7pm public opening of Antony Gormley / Pavla Melkova at Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, which the gallery said he would attend in person; the photographer is Prague-based and the file page records no location. Head-and-shoulders, facing the camera.

Photograph by Jindrich Nosek (NoJin), CC BY-SA 4.0.
Antony Gormley
Full nameAntony Mark David Gormley
Works asSculptor
Works inLondon, United Kingdom
Represented byWhite Cube, London, Hong Kong, New York, Seoul; Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Paris, London, Seoul; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Galleria Continua, San Gimignano, Beijing
Nationality British
MovementBody-based sculpture
Sources71 cited
Last verified16 September 2026

About this page Last verified 16 September 2026 · 71 sources cited

On this page 14 sections
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Almost every figure Antony Gormley has made since 1981 began as a hollow: a plaster case taken from his own body, wrapped in clingfilm and scrim and held still for over an hour, which he treats, in his words, as a found object, a thing he happens to inhabit, rather than as a self-portrait. That case, and later a digital scan of it, is the master from which the beaten-lead body-cases, the solid cast-iron figures, the steel Angel and the pixellated blockworks all descend, so the entire output is one body multiplied through materials that are chosen to weather in public: Cor-ten steel rooted twenty metres into a Gateshead hill, iron driven into a Merseyside beach and left uncleaned, lead standing in a flooded cathedral crypt. What is hard to find is the industrial chain behind that intimacy: a Halifax foundry that has advised on the iron for years, a foundry in Hexham that the artist bought outright to keep it open, a seven-bay Chipperfield studio in King's Cross and a habit of incising initials, date and edition number on the underside of each cast, which is where the paperwork of a Gormley actually lives.

Antony Gormley, born in London in 1950, is the British sculptor whose Angel of the North (1998) stands beside the A1 at Gateshead and whose Another Place (1997), one hundred iron men on Crosby Beach, was scheduled to stay eighteen months in 2005 and never left. He read archaeology, anthropology and art history at Trinity College, Cambridge, spent 1971 to 1974 in India and Sri Lanka studying Buddhist meditation, trained at the Slade and held his first solo exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1981. He won the Turner Prize in 1994, was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours and was appointed a Companion of Honour in June 2025.

The standard account calls the work statues of the artist. The record says otherwise: the body is a container whose emptiness is the point, and the practice has moved steadily from lead cases of the 1980s to iron, steel, concrete, clay, seawater and kilometres of coiled aluminium tube, in a studio that employs makers trained on both the foundry floor and at art school. Museums hold the work in depth (Tate lists eleven works, Museum Voorlinden twelve, the Arts Council Collection its largest single object, Field for the British Isles), the surveys have run from the Hayward in 2007 to the Royal Academy in 2019, the Musee Rodin in 2023, the Nasher in Dallas in 2025 and KMSKA Antwerp, open until 20 September 2026.

The page records what leaves the studio and how it can be checked: the fabricators, the funders of each public commission, the auction results with hammer and premium separated where the house publishes them and what the studio does and does not say about certificates. It also records the contingencies, since three of the five works illustrated here were at some point removed, nearly removed or taken out of a river.

Signals and the reading

Dated, sourced signals for Antony Gormley
SignalDateWhat is recordedSource
Institutional2026Tate holds 11 works, among them Bed (1980-1), Three Ways: Mould, Hole and Passage (1981-2), Untitled (for Francis) (1985) and A Case for an Angel III (1990).20
Institutional2022Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, holds twelve works, including a sculpture made for the Clingenbosch sculpture garden in 1994.29
Institutional1998Gateshead Council commissioned and owns Angel of the North (installed February 1998, GBP 800,000, Arts Council Lottery GBP 584,000, ERDF GBP 150,000, Northern Arts GBP 45,000).3
Institutional2007Sefton Council: Another Place made permanent on Crosby Beach after the planned 2006 move to New York was abandoned; 'Another Place is permanent and there are no plans to move it'.6
Institutional1993Birmingham City Council: Iron:Man, gift of the Trustee Savings Bank to the city in March 1993, cast at Firth Rixon Castings, Willenhall; stands in Victoria Square.7
Institutional1986Winchester Cathedral: Sound II, lead over a plaster cast of the artist's body, in the crypt; listed among the cathedral's works of art.8
Institutional2026The studio's own list names public collections including the British Museum, V&A, National Portrait Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, Arts Council Collection, Centre Pompidou, Moderna Museet, Louisiana, Hirshhorn, SFMOMA, MOCA Los Angeles, Walker Art Center, M+ Hong Kong, National Museum of Modern Art Tokyo and the State Hermitage Museum (studio list, not yet verified museum by museum).18
Institutional21 Sep 2019Royal Academy of Arts, London: the Main Galleries survey 'Antony Gormley', 21 September to 3 December 2019, works from a 45-year career with new installations.21
Institutional13 Sep 2025Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas: SURVEY, the first major museum survey of his work in the United States, 13 September 2025 to 4 January 2026.33
Institutional17 May 2007Hayward Gallery, London: Blind Light, his first major showing in a London public gallery, with Event Horizon on the surrounding rooftops.25
Institutional23 Sep 2011State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg: Still Standing, blockworks set among the museum's classical sculpture.26
Institutional17 Oct 2023Musee Rodin, Paris: Critical Mass, sixty cast-iron figures with over two hundred workbooks, to 3 March 2024.23
Institutional23 May 2026KMSKA Antwerp: Geestgrond, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, to 20 September 2026.34
Institutional6 Aug 2021National Gallery Singapore: Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission, Horizon Field Singapore (2021).30
Institutional2 May 2019NEON with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades: SIGHT, 29 iron bodyforms across the archaeological site of Delos, 2 May to 31 October 2019.32
Institutional2010National Galleries of Scotland commissioned 6 TIMES (2010), six cast-iron figures along the Water of Leith; four river figures removed in 2012 after complications with their tilting mechanism and reinstalled, permanently fixed, in 2019.55
Institutional1996Arts Council Collection purchased Field for the British Isles (1993), 40,000 terracotta figures, its largest work, with the Henry Moore Foundation and the National Art Fund.58
Biennales and surveys1982Venice Biennale, Aperto '82: Three Ways: Mould, Hole and Passage (1981-2) shown (installation view credited on the Royal Academy's own article).22
Biennales and surveys1986Venice Biennale 1986, per Xavier Hufkens' artist biography.39
Biennales and surveys1987documenta 8, Kassel, 1987, per Xavier Hufkens' artist biography.39
Biennales and surveys2005Liverpool Biennial (fourth edition): Another Place arrives on Crosby Beach, scheduled for 18 months and never removed.22
Biennales and surveys2022Bangkok Art Biennale, 'Chaos : Calm' (group), per the studio's exhibition list.18
Biennales and surveys2024Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Niigata: Man:Rock V, a permanent installation, per the studio's list.18
RecognitionNov 1994Turner Prize 1994, Tate Gallery, London (shortlist Willie Doherty, Peter Doig, Shirazeh Houshiary; jury including Nicholas Serota).50
Recognition2013Praemium Imperiale (25th), Sculpture, Japan Art Association.49
Recognition1999South Bank Prize for Visual Art.18
Recognition2007Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture.18
Recognition2012Obayashi Prize, the first Briton to receive it according to the 2025 honours citation.52
Recognition1997OBE, for services to sculpture.18
Recognition2003Elected Royal Academician.18
RecognitionJan 2014Knight Bachelor, New Year Honours 2014: 'Sculptor. For services to the Arts.'51
RecognitionJun 2025Companion of Honour, King's Birthday Honours 2025.52
Recognition2026Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects; Honorary Doctor of the University of Cambridge; Fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge (studio profile).18
Representation1987Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, since the gallery's founding year 1987 (first show 28 April to 30 May 1987; nine solo shows to Body Field, 2022).39
Representation1993Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg and Paris (later London and Seoul), since Learning To See, Villa Kast, 30 April to 31 May 1993; fourteen solo shows to Inextricable, Seoul, 2025 (shared with White Cube).38
Representation1994White Cube, London (later Hong Kong, New York, Seoul), since Lost Subject, Duke Street, 1994; solo shows to Witness: Early Lead Works (2025) and Inextricable, Seoul (2025).37
Representation2019Galleria Continua, San Gimignano and Beijing: Body Space Time (2022), Body Buildings (2024-25), What Holds Us (2026); supplied the installation views of Essere at the Uffizi, 2019.40
Market6 Oct 2017Christie's London, Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction, lot 14: A Case for an Angel I (1989), plaster, fibreglass, lead, steel and air; hammer GBP 4,500,000, GBP 5,296,250 with premium, against GBP 5,000,000 to 7,000,000; buyer identified by Artsy's report of the sale as Yusaku Maezawa; the standing auction record.41
Market14 Oct 2011Christie's London, Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction, lot 5: Angel of the North (Life-Size Maquette), 1996, number five of five, 533.5 x 200.6 cm; GBP 3,401,250 with premium against GBP 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 (hammer not published by the house).43
Market8 Mar 2024Phillips London, 20th Century and Contemporary Art Day Sale, lot 126: Meme CXX (2010), cast iron, 36 cm; GBP 254,000 with premium against GBP 90,000 to 120,000; provenance White Cube, London; lot marked by the house with its symbols for a minimum price guarantee and a third-party guarantee.46
Market11 Oct 2024Phillips London, Modern and Contemporary Art Day Sale, lot 175: Peckham Bollards (Peg, Snowman, Penis and Oval), conceived 2001, cast by Hargreaves Foundry 2021; GBP 86,360 with premium against GBP 15,000 to 20,000; provenance Hargreaves Foundry, United Kingdom.45
Market11 Oct 2024Bonhams London, Post-War and Contemporary Art, lot 38: Angel of the North (1995), graphite on paper, 29.5 x 21 cm; GBP 5,376 with premium.47
Market14 May 2024Sotheby's New York, Contemporary Day Auction, lot 241: Angel of the North (1997), bronze, 10 of 12 plus 1 AP, 99 x 262 cm, estimate USD 2,500,000 to 3,500,000; the result is published only to logged-in users and is not recorded here.48
Literature2019Antony Gormley, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2019; texts by Martin Caiger-Smith, Priyamvada Natarajan, Michael Newman and Jeanette Winterson (two editions).18
Literature2017Martin Caiger-Smith, Antony Gormley, Rizzoli, New York, 2017; second edition 2022.18
Literature2020Martin Gayford and Antony Gormley, Shaping the World, Thames and Hudson, 2020; Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Korean editions 2021-2024.18
Literature2023Critical Mass, Musee Rodin / Yale University Press, 2023; texts by Dieter Roelstraete, Thalia Allington-Wood and Jean-Hubert Martin.18
Literature2022Gormley / Lehmbruck: Calling on the Body, Hatje Cantz, 2022, 240 pages, German and English.28
Literature2026Drawing: Antony Gormley, Thames and Hudson, 2026; texts by Margaret Iversen, W.J.T. Mitchell, Daisy Hildyard, Merlin Sheldrake and Jeanette Winterson; and Geestgrond, MER. Books, text by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.18
Literature14 Aug 2019Amy Macpherson, 'Antony Gormley: 10 works to know', Royal Academy of Arts, on the body-case method, Bed, Field and the King's Cross studio.22
Literature23 Sep 2019The 2019 Royal Academy reviews split: Simon Schama in the Financial Times ('a symphonic storm of a show') and four stars from the Evening Standard against three stars from the Guardian and the Observer's 'shortfall between the art and Gormley's exalted ambitions' (quoted via a round-up, to be replaced by the primary reviews).59
Practice2003Studio complex north of King's Cross, London, by David Chipperfield Architects (2001-03): 1,000 square metres, seven bays, workshops for welding and casting, a photographic studio and two private studios for the artist.53
Practice1 Feb 2020Hargreaves Foundry, Halifax (founded 1881) has advised on and cast many of the iron works; its head Michael Hinchliffe said in 2020 that Gormley now has his own forge in Northumberland.54
Practice14 Aug 2019Body-case method: the artist wrapped in clingfilm and plaster-soaked scrim, holding a pose for over an hour; later works from digital scans; the Angel's body castings were scanned by Newcastle University's Geomatics department for the CAD model.22
Practice11 Oct 2024Editions and multiples: the Angel of the North exists as a life-size cast-iron maquette in an edition of five (Christie's and Sotheby's cataloguing) and as a bronze in an edition of 12 plus 1 AP (Sotheby's); the Peckham Bollards were cast by Hargreaves in 2021 and reached auction from the foundry.45
Practice2026The studio states that Gormley's work is not available as NFTs; the studio site publishes no certificate or authentication policy (site search for 'certificate' finds no result).19
Practice12 Aug 2024Conservation of Another Place: the figures are driven into the beach on metre-high piles, are designed to weather and are not cleaned; a number were moved as a planning condition of permanence.6
Practice7 Apr 2024The studio owns a foundry at Hexham, Northumberland, bought to stop it closing; seven of its 23 staff stayed and were combined with seven art-school trained makers (Gormley to the Sunday Times, 2024).57
Public attention2026Gateshead Council's published figure for the Angel of the North: seen by about 90,000 people a day, 33 million a year, from the A1 and the East Coast main line.1
Public attention14 Aug 2019The Royal Academy's figure: 150,000 visitors a year to the Angel of the North site.22
Public attention21 Sep 2019The Royal Academy's exhibition page: 2,400 members of the public took part in One and Other on Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth.21

Stage Institutional (holdings in ten or more museums, or a retrospective, or a major prize; recomputed from the signals on every update, never set by hand)

The reading

The record shows an artist whose authority rests on three things that are unusually well documented for a living sculptor: public owners who published the files, from Gateshead's funding breakdown to the National Galleries of Scotland's re-fixing of the river figures; a fabrication chain that is named, from Hartlepool Steel and Hargreaves to a foundry the artist now owns; and casts that carry their own inscription. The institutional signals are as deep as they get, with museum surveys in London, Paris, Dallas and Antwerp inside seven years and honours up to the Companion of Honour. The secondary market is thin at the top, two Christie's records for angel works six years apart, and steady in the middle, where the small iron works trace back to a gallery or to the foundry rather than to the studio. What would change the reading is a published certificate practice, an archive or foundation and the Sotheby's results the house keeps behind a login; until then the studio is the only authority and the underside of the cast is the only document, and that is the fact to hold onto.

Exhibitions

On now 1

  • On now
    Antony Gormley: Geestgrond
    KMSKA - Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp · Antwerp, Belgium
    23 May to 20 Sep 2026Confirmed 16 Sep 2026

Past exhibitions 15

  • Closed
    SURVEY: Antony Gormley
    Nasher Sculpture Center · Dallas, United States
    13 Sep 2025 to 4 Jan 2026Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley / Pavla Melkova
    Galerie Rudolfinum · Prague, Czech Republic
    5 Sep 2024 to 5 Jan 2025Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley: Time Horizon
    Houghton Hall · King's Lynn, Norfolk, United Kingdom
    21 Apr to 31 Oct 2024Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley: Critical Mass
    Musee Rodin · Paris, France
    17 Oct 2023 to 3 Mar 2024Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley: Body Politic
    White Cube Bermondsey · London, United Kingdom
    22 Nov 2023 to 28 Jan 2024Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Gormley / Lehmbruck: Calling on the Body
    Lehmbruck Museum · Duisburg, Germany
    23 Sep 2022 to 26 Feb 2023Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley
    National Gallery Singapore · Singapore, Singapore
    6 Aug 2021 to 12 Feb 2023Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley - GROUND
    Museum Voorlinden · Wassenaar, Netherlands
    26 May to 25 Sep 2022Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley
    Royal Academy of Arts · London, United Kingdom
    21 Sep to 3 Dec 2019Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    SIGHT
    Archaeological site of Delos (NEON with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades) · Delos, Greece
    2 May to 31 Oct 2019Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley. Essere
    Gallerie degli Uffizi · Florence, Italy
    26 Feb to 26 May 2019Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley: Still Standing
    White Cube Hoxton Square · London, United Kingdom
    13 Jul to 15 Sep 2012Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Still Standing
    The State Hermitage Museum · St Petersburg, Russia
    23 Sep 2011 to 15 Jan 2012Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Antony Gormley: Blind Light
    Hayward Gallery · London, United Kingdom
    17 May to 19 Aug 2007Confirmed 16 Sep 2026
  • Closed
    Turner Prize 1994
    Tate Gallery · London, United Kingdom
    2 Nov to 4 Dec 1994Confirmed 16 Sep 2026

Images

5 plates
Angel of the North, 1998, Gateshead
Angel of the North, 1998, GatesheadAngel of the North (1998), weathering (Cor-ten) steel, 20 m high with a 54 m wingspan, on the reclaimed pit-head baths site beside the A1 at Low Fell, Gateshead. Photographed from the public hillside in May 2021.Photograph by Alex Liivet, CC0 · Work permanently sited in public in the United Kingdom; reproduced under freedom of panorama (s.62 CDPA 1988)
Another Place, 1997, Crosby Beach
Another Place, 1997, Crosby BeachOne of the 100 cast-iron figures of Another Place (1997) on Crosby Beach, Sefton, looking out to the Irish Sea with the offshore wind farm on the horizon; the surface carries the barnacles, rust and algae that the council says are not cleaned off. Photographed April 2016.Photograph by Donald Judge, CC BY 2.0 · Work permanently sited in public in the United Kingdom; reproduced under freedom of panorama (s.62 CDPA 1988)
Iron:Man, 1993, Victoria Square, Birmingham
Iron:Man, 1993, Victoria Square, BirminghamIron:Man (1993), cast iron, standing at the lower end of Victoria Square, Birmingham, in front of the Town Hall, after its return to the square overnight on 23 to 24 February 2022, as Birmingham Live reported. The figure leans slightly and is set with its feet below pavement level. Photographed July 2024.Photograph by The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Work permanently sited in public in the United Kingdom; reproduced under freedom of panorama (s.62 CDPA 1988)
Sound II, 1986, Winchester Cathedral crypt
Sound II, 1986, Winchester Cathedral cryptSound II (1986), fibreglass and lead from a cast of the artist's body, 188 cm high, standing in the Norman crypt of Winchester Cathedral during a winter flood, when the figure stands in water and contemplates the water held in its cupped hands. Photographed 30 April 2024.Photograph by David Kernan, CC BY 4.0 · Work permanently sited in public in the United Kingdom; reproduced under freedom of panorama (s.62 CDPA 1988)
6 TIMES, 2010, Water of Leith, Edinburgh
6 TIMES, 2010, Water of Leith, EdinburghOne of the six cast-iron figures of 6 TIMES (2010), standing in the Water of Leith at Powderhall, Edinburgh, after the 2019 reinstallation that fixed the river figures permanently to their mounts. Commissioned by the National Galleries of Scotland. Photographed February 2021 from the public walkway.Photograph by Mike Shaw, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Work permanently sited in public in the United Kingdom; reproduced under freedom of panorama (s.62 CDPA 1988)

Chronology

  • 1950

    Born in London.18

  • 1968-71

    Reads archaeology, anthropology and art history at Trinity College, Cambridge.4962

  • 1971-74

    India and Sri Lanka; studies Buddhist Vipassana meditation.4922

  • 1980-81

    Bed, bread and wax, made with Vicken Parsons after leaving the Slade; now at Tate.2220

  • 1981

    First solo exhibition, Whitechapel Gallery, London (Bed, Natural Selection, End Product, Room, Exercise Between Blood and Earth).2262

  • 1981-82

    Three Ways: Mould, Hole and Passage, the first lead body-cases; shown at Aperto '82, Venice Biennale.22

  • 1986

    Sound II installed in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral.6389

  • 1987

    First exhibition with Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, in the gallery's founding year.39

  • 1989

    A Case for an Angel I, lead over plaster and fibreglass with steel; first Field figures made in the Peckham studio.4122

  • 1993

    Iron:Man given to Birmingham by the Trustee Savings Bank (March); Field for the British Isles made with about 100 people in St Helens; first Ropac show, Salzburg.75838

  • 1994

    Selected for the Gateshead landmark (January); first White Cube show, Lost Subject; wins the Turner Prize (exhibition 2 November to 4 December).33750

  • 1996

    Angel funding of GBP 800,000 secured (April); Arts Council Collection buys Field for the British Isles.358

  • 1997

    Another Place first installed at Cuxhaven, Germany; OBE.2218

  • 1998

    Angel of the North sections travel from Hartlepool on the night of 14 February and the body is lowered at dawn on the 15th; official launch in June.3464

  • 2001-03

    Studio complex north of King's Cross built to David Chipperfield Architects' design.53

  • 2003

    Elected Royal Academician; Inside Australia, 51 figures on Lake Ballard, Western Australia.1822

  • 2005

    Another Place arrives on Crosby Beach for the fourth Liverpool Biennial, on an eighteen-month permit.226

  • 2007

    Blind Light at the Hayward Gallery (17 May to 19 August) with Event Horizon on the South Bank rooftops; Sefton's planning committee votes nine to five on 7 March to make Another Place permanent; Bernhard Heiliger Award.2425566518

  • 2008

    Third life-size Angel maquette sold at Sotheby's London, 1 July.4448

  • 2009

    One and Other: 2,400 members of the public occupy the Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square.21

  • 2010

    6 TIMES commissioned by the National Galleries of Scotland along the Water of Leith.55

  • 2011

    Still Standing at the State Hermitage Museum (23 September to 15 January 2012); Christie's sells the fifth life-size Angel maquette for GBP 3,401,250 with premium (14 October).2643

  • 2012

    Four river figures of 6 TIMES removed after repeated problems with their tilting mechanism in floods; Obayashi Prize.557018

  • 2013

    Praemium Imperiale for sculpture.49

  • 2014

    Knight Bachelor, New Year Honours, for services to the arts.51

  • 2017

    A Case for an Angel I sets the auction record at Christie's London, 6 October (GBP 4,500,000 hammer, GBP 5,296,250 with premium); Iron:Man lifted out of Victoria Square on 5 September for the tram works.414256

  • 2019

    Essere at the Uffizi (26 February to 26 May); SIGHT on Delos (2 May to 31 October); 6 TIMES reinstalled in Edinburgh; the Royal Academy survey (21 September to 3 December).31325521

  • 2021-23

    National Gallery Singapore roof-garden commission Horizon Field Singapore (6 August 2021 to 15 January 2023).30

  • 2022

    GROUND at Museum Voorlinden (26 May to 25 September); Calling on the Body at the Lehmbruck Museum (from 23 September); Iron:Man back in Victoria Square by July.292860

  • 2023-24

    Critical Mass at the Musee Rodin (17 October 2023 to 3 March 2024); Body Politic at White Cube Bermondsey (22 November 2023 to 28 January 2024).2336

  • 2024

    Time Horizon at Houghton Hall (21 April to 31 October); the Sunday Times reports the Hexham foundry; two small iron works sell at Phillips London; Prague dialogue show with Pavla Melkova opens 5 September.3557454611

  • 2025

    Companion of Honour, King's Birthday Honours (June); SURVEY at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (13 September to 4 January 2026).5233

  • 2026

    Geestgrond at KMSKA Antwerp, 23 May to 20 September, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev.34

The market

The published secondary record is two records for angel works at Christie's London (GBP 3,401,250 with premium in 2011, GBP 5,296,250 with premium on a GBP 4,500,000 hammer in 2017), a bronze Angel edition of twelve that Sotheby's has offered in 2014, 2018 and 2024 with results shown only to logged-in users, cast-iron body-forms at Phillips in the low-to-mid six figures in 2024 (one of them under a third-party guarantee) and works on paper in the low thousands. The galleries publish no price bands and none is inferred. Every figure below is the house's own published number; where the hammer is not published it is left blank.

Auction results for Antony Gormley
DateSaleWorkResultNote
6 October 2017Christie's, London, Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction, sale 14442, lot 14A Case for an Angel I (1989), plaster, fibreglass, lead, steel and airHammer 4,500,000
With premium 5,296,250
GBP		Estimate GBP 5,000,000 to 7,000,000; hammer from Artsy's report of the sale; buyer identified by Artsy's report of the sale as Yusaku Maezawa; artist record.
14 October 2011Christie's, London, Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction, sale 7990, lot 5Angel of the North (Life-Size Maquette), 1996, number 5 of 5, 533.5 x 200.6 cmWith premium 3,401,250
GBP		Estimate GBP 1,500,000 to 2,000,000; hammer not published by the house; record at the time.
8 March 2024Phillips, London, 20th Century and Contemporary Art Day Sale, lot 126Meme CXX (2010), cast iron, 36.1 x 9.8 x 5.1 cmWith premium 254,000
GBP		Estimate GBP 90,000 to 120,000; provenance: White Cube, London, acquired from the above by the present owner; lot carried Phillips' symbols for a minimum price guarantee and a third-party guarantee.
11 October 2024Phillips, London, Modern and Contemporary Art Day Sale, lot 175Peckham Bollards (Peg, Snowman, Penis and Oval), conceived 2001, cast by Hargreaves Foundry 2021, cast iron in four partsWith premium 86,360
GBP		Estimate GBP 15,000 to 20,000; provenance: Hargreaves Foundry, United Kingdom, acquired from the above by the present owner.
11 October 2024Bonhams, London, New Bond Street, Post-War and Contemporary Art, lot 38Angel of the North (1995), graphite on paper, 29.5 x 21 cm, inscribed 'seismic plan AG '95' (lower right) and 'Angel of the North' (lower left)With premium 5,376
GBP		Provenance from Newcastle University Fine Art Department, donated by the artist; Artist's Resale Right applies.

Hammer is the price at which the bidding stopped; with premium adds the fee the house charges the buyer on top. Hammer price and buyer's premium in the glossary.

Recorded without a public price

  • 1 July 2008 · Angel of the North (Life-size Maquette), 1996, cast iron, number 3 of 5, 199.4 x 533.5 x 33.6 cm · Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art Evening Auction, lot 10 Estimate GBP 600,000 to 800,000 on Sotheby's e-catalogue page; provenance White Cube, London; Art Observed reported the result as USD 4.6 million; the GBP result is shown only to logged-in users.
  • 7 March 2018 · Angel of the North (1997), bronze, 6 of 12 plus 1 AP, 96.5 x 262.9 x 20.3 cm · Sotheby's, London, Contemporary Art Evening Auction, lot 10 Estimate GBP 1,500,000 to 2,000,000; provenance White Cube, London, a private collection in the USA, then Sotheby's New York, 15 May 2014, lot 445; result shown only to logged-in users.
  • 15 May 2014 · Angel of the North (1997), bronze, 6 of 12 plus 1 AP, 96.5 x 262.9 x 20.3 cm · Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Art Day Sale, lot 445 Estimate USD 800,000 to 1,200,000; provenance White Cube, London; the same cast was offered again at Sotheby's London in 2018; result shown only to logged-in users.
  • 14 May 2024 · Angel of the North (1997), bronze, 10 of 12 plus 1 AP, 99 x 262.3 x 20 cm · Sotheby's, New York, Contemporary Day Auction, lot 241 Estimate USD 2,500,000 to 3,500,000; Maharam family collection; provenance White Cube, London, then a London private collection from October 2002; result visible only to logged-in users.

Where to see the work

Where to see the work of Antony Gormley
InstitutionCityHoldingsNote
Gateshead CouncilGatesheadAngel of the North (1998)Beside the A1 at Low Fell; free, open ground; about 150,000 visitors a year on site.
Sefton CouncilCrosby, MerseysideAnother Place (1997), 100 cast-iron figuresCrosby Beach, 3 km of foreshore; submerged around high tides of 9 to 10 metres; do not walk out to the far figures.
Birmingham City CouncilBirminghamIron:Man (1993)Lower end of Victoria Square, near Pinfold Street.
Winchester CathedralWinchesterSound II (1986)In the crypt; crypt tours Monday to Saturday, cancelled when flooded, when the figure is seen from a viewing platform.
National Galleries of ScotlandEdinburgh6 TIMES (2010), six cast-iron figuresFrom the garden of Modern One along the Water of Leith to Leith Docks.
TateLondonEleven works including Bed (1980-81), Three Ways (1981-82), Untitled (for Francis) (1985)Display status is not stated on the collection record; one work is listed as viewable by appointment.
Arts Council CollectionLondon (touring)Field for the British Isles (1993)Shown only when installed by a volunteer team; last listed at Sunderland in 2021.
Museum VoorlindenWassenaarTwelve works, one made for the Clingenbosch garden in 1994Private museum with an estate.
KMSKA - Royal Museum of Fine Arts AntwerpAntwerpGeestgrond, over the collection, roofs and surrounding streetsOn now until 20 September 2026.

The essay

10 sections · about 3,900 words · 17 min
Chapter 1

Not statues of the artist: a body used as a found object

The first works were not casts at all. Bed (1980-81), now at Tate, was chewed into being: Gormley ate his way through thousands of slices of bread, which he and his wife Vicken Parsons preserved in...

The first works were not casts at all. Bed (1980-81), now at Tate, was chewed into being: Gormley ate his way through thousands of slices of bread, which he and his wife Vicken Parsons preserved in wax and stacked into two slabs the size of a mattress, each with half a body-shaped cavity. It was while making Bed that he decided to use his own body, and Three Ways: Mould, Hole and Passage (1981-82), shown at Aperto '82 at the Venice Biennale and also at Tate, was the first of what he calls body-case works: a plaster mould covered in sheets of beaten lead soldered together, with holes at the orifices so that the emptiness inside is visible. The soldering seams are left showing. He has described the decision in the language of conceptual art: "Here is this thing I actually happen to inhabit. Can I treat that as a found object?"

That is why the label statues of himself, which the standard account still uses, misreads the work. The figures carry no individual features; Gormley told Gateshead Council, in words the council's history page quotes, that the face would not have them. The body is presented as a place, and from the mid 1990s Gormley began to abstract it further into blockworks built from rectangular iron units, into the pixellated Space Station of 2007 and into lines in space such as Clearing, kilometres of square aluminium tube looped through a gallery with no beginning or end.

Two things in his formation are documented rather than inferred. He was raised a Catholic and educated at a Benedictine boarding school; and between 1971 and 1974 he studied Buddhist meditation in India and Sri Lanka, a Vipassana practice of sitting still for many hours a day that the Royal Academy's own account links directly to his ability to hold a pose while the plaster sets. Both are part of the record of how the work is made, and neither is offered here as a key to what it means.

Chapter 2

How a Gormley is made: the case, the iron, the two foundries

The method for a solid figure, as the Royal Academy describes it, starts with the artist wrapped in clingfilm and then in plaster soaked in scrim, holding the pose for well over an hour.

The method for a solid figure, as the Royal Academy describes it, starts with the artist wrapped in clingfilm and then in plaster soaked in scrim, holding the pose for well over an hour. The resulting case is the master. For later series the body is digitally scanned, which White Cube notes allows poses that are more difficult or dynamic; for Inside Australia (2003) fifty-one residents of Menzies, Western Australia, were scanned and reduced to what he calls insiders, the same height but a third of the mass. The Angel of the North began the same way: the original body castings were scanned by the Geomatics department at Newcastle University, converted to a CAD model by Grafton Software and cut into ribs by Teesside Profilers before Hartlepool Steel Fabrications built the body and wings with Ove Arup and Partners as engineers.

The iron is cast industrially. Hargreaves Foundry in Water Lane, Halifax, founded in 1881, has worked closely with Gormley for years, advising on the casting of many of the classic works, and in 2021 cast the four Peckham Bollards that Phillips sold in October 2024 with the foundry itself as the first name in the provenance. Its head, Michael Hinchliffe, told the Yorkshire Post in February 2020 that Gormley had learned a lot from the foundry and now had his own forge in Northumberland. Gormley confirmed the arrangement to the Sunday Times in April 2024: he bought a foundry at Hexham to stop it closing, kept seven of its twenty-three staff and combined them with seven makers trained at art school. Iron:Man in Birmingham was cast earlier and elsewhere, at Firth Rixon Castings in Willenhall, according to the city council.

The conservation questions follow from the materials. The Angel is weathering steel with a copper content that forms its own patina, on concrete piles twenty metres into rock; the council expects it to stand for more than a hundred years. The Crosby figures are meant to rust and to carry barnacles and algae, are driven into the beach on metre-high piles and are not cleaned. The lead body-cases of the 1980s are soft metal over plaster and fibreglass, and Sound II has stood in a crypt that floods every winter since 1986. The four river figures of 6 TIMES in Edinburgh were designed to tilt and submerge when the Water of Leith rose; two went over in heavy rain four weeks after installation in 2010, as the Scotsman reported; the National Galleries of Scotland took all four out in 2012 to resolve what it calls complications with that mechanism, which the Edinburgh Evening News described in 2019 as repeated problems with the tilting mechanism, and put them back in 2019 permanently fixed to their mounts. The galleries now cover conservation and debris clearance. Field for the British Isles, forty thousand fired-clay figures, takes a team of volunteers about a week to install each time it is shown. Recent gallery work adds reinforced concrete cast 55 mm thick, clay and seawater floods and fired-clay body-forms by the hundred.

Chapter 3

From the studio to the wall label: inscriptions, editions, galleries and the missing certificate

The paperwork of a Gormley begins on the object.

The paperwork of a Gormley begins on the object. The auction houses' own cataloguing shows the convention: a cast-iron Meme is incised with the artist's initials, number and date on the underside; the bronze Angel of the North sold in New York in 2024 is incised with the initials, the date 1997 and the number 10/12 on the underside, from an edition of twelve plus one artist's proof. The life-size maquette of the Angel exists in an edition of five; the one Christie's sold in 2011 is number five. A collector checking a cast should therefore expect an underside inscription and an edition size that the studio can confirm.

The gallery chain is long and stable, which matters because the gallery invoice is the first document in most provenances. Xavier Hufkens in Brussels has shown Gormley since the gallery's founding year, 1987. Thaddaeus Ropac has shown him since Learning To See at the Villa Kast in Salzburg in 1993, and White Cube since Lost Subject at Duke Street in 1994; Galleria Continua supplied the installation views of the Uffizi exhibition of 2019 and has since staged Body Space Time (2022) and What Holds Us (2026) in San Gimignano and Body Buildings (2024-25) in Beijing. The Sotheby's provenance for the 2024 bronze reads White Cube, London, then a private collection from October 2002, which is the typical shape. Two Phillips lots of 2024 carry short provenances: Meme CXX passed from White Cube, London, to its consignor, and the Peckham Bollards from Hargreaves Foundry itself to theirs. Neither lot names the artist as the seller, and no auction record consulted for this page shows the studio consigning.

What the studio does not publish is as much a finding as what it does. Its website carries a formal policy that the work is not available as NFTs, but a search of the site for the word certificate finds nothing, and no statement about an inventory, an archive or an authentication procedure could be found there. The studio's profile page is, however, the fullest public register found for this page of the exhibitions, the collections and the literature. The studio building itself is documented by its architect: David Chipperfield's seven-bay, 1,000 square metre complex north of King's Cross, 2001-03, with workshops for welding and casting, a photographic studio and two private studios for the artist, one of them the drawing room where the Clearing series and the notebooks begin.

Chapter 4

Public commissions and who paid for them

The Angel of the North is unusually well documented because its owner published the file.

The Angel of the North is unusually well documented because its owner published the file. Gateshead Council's Art in Public Places Panel earmarked the reclaimed pit-head baths site above the A1 in July 1990; a shortlist was drawn up in December 1993; Gormley was selected in January 1994, and his design, in the council's words, originally caused uproar. Planning permission came in February 1995 and the GBP 800,000 was secured in April 1996: GBP 584,000 from the Arts Council's Lottery fund, GBP 150,000 from the European Regional Development Fund, GBP 45,000 from Northern Arts, plus private sponsorship. Hartlepool Steel Fabrications was chosen in May 1997 and Thomas Armstrong (Construction) began the foundations that September. On the night of 14 February 1998 the body and wings travelled from Hartlepool under police escort at ten miles an hour. At dawn the body, 100 tonnes, was lowered onto fifty-two three-metre bolts by a 500-tonne crane in twenty minutes and the assembly took the rest of the day; the official launch followed in June. The council's figure is that the work is seen by more than one person a second, 33 million a year.

Another Place was made for Cuxhaven in Germany in 1997 and shown in Stavanger and De Panne before the fourth Liverpool Biennial brought it to Crosby in 2005; the Sunday Times reported in April 2024 that the work was a German commission whose fabrication was paid for by the taxpayers of Schleswig-Holstein. Sefton Council records that the South Sefton Development Trust brought the work to the area with support from the Mersey Waterfront programme, the Northwest Regional Development Agency, the Mersey Docks and Harbour Company, the Arts Council and the council itself, that contractors spent three weeks lifting the figures into place, and that in November 2006 the figures were expected to move to New York before the decision that they would stay permanently. Sefton's planning committee had first decided against keeping the work; on 7 March 2007, after revised plans moved nineteen figures away from the coastguard station, the emergency access and the bird-feeding ground, it voted nine to five to keep it, with the Maritime and Coastguard Agency still asking for removal, as the Wikinews report of the next day records from the BBC's and the Liverpool Daily Post's accounts. The 2024 Houghton Hall showing of Time Horizon, one hundred figures, was likewise a work first commissioned in 2006 for an archaeological site in Catanzaro province and funded there.

The pattern of public money continues in the smaller commissions. Iron:Man (1993) was a gift to Birmingham by the Trustee Savings Bank. 6 TIMES (2010) was commissioned by the National Galleries of Scotland with the Art Fund, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the galleries' patrons, Claire Enders and the Henry Moore Foundation, and its 2019 reinstallation was paid for by an anonymous supporter. SIGHT on Delos in 2019 was produced by the NEON foundation with the Greek Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades. Horizon Field Singapore (2021) was the National Gallery Singapore's Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission. Sound II (1986), fibreglass and lead, 188 cm high, the earliest of the works illustrated here, stands in the crypt of Winchester Cathedral and is listed by the cathedral among its works of art.

Chapter 5

The institutions: what museums hold and what they have shown

Tate's artist record lists eleven works, spanning the bread-and-wax Bed of 1980-81, the lead body-cases Three Ways (1981-82) and Untitled (for Francis) (1985) and A Case for an Angel III (1990).

Tate's artist record lists eleven works, spanning the bread-and-wax Bed of 1980-81, the lead body-cases Three Ways (1981-82) and Untitled (for Francis) (1985) and A Case for an Angel III (1990). The Arts Council Collection bought Field for the British Isles in 1996 with the Henry Moore Foundation and the National Art Fund and calls it the largest work in the collection; it has been seen by over 500,000 people on tour. Museum Voorlinden in the Netherlands holds twelve works, one of them made for the Clingenbosch sculpture garden in 1994. The studio's own list of public collections runs to more than a hundred institutions, from the British Museum, the V and A and the National Portrait Gallery to the Centre Pompidou, Moderna Museet, the Hirshhorn, SFMOMA, M+ in Hong Kong, the National Museum of Modern Art in Tokyo and the State Hermitage Museum; that list is the studio's and has not been verified museum by museum for this page.

The exhibition record is a sequence of institutional surveys rather than gallery shows. Blind Light at the Hayward Gallery (17 May to 19 August 2007) was, in the Southbank Centre's words, his first major showing in a London public gallery, with Event Horizon on the rooftops around Waterloo Bridge. Still Standing at the State Hermitage Museum (23 September 2011 to 15 January 2012) set seventeen iron blockworks among nine classical sculptures placed at ground level. The Royal Academy filled its Main Galleries from 21 September to 3 December 2019, curated by Martin Caiger-Smith with Sarah Lea. Museum Voorlinden's GROUND (26 May to 25 September 2022) was the first show to occupy both the museum and its estate; the Lehmbruck Museum paired him with Wilhelm Lehmbruck (23 September 2022 to 26 February 2023); the Musee Rodin gave Critical Mass II its temporary galleries and garden (17 October 2023 to 3 March 2024) with over two hundred workbooks; the Nasher Sculpture Center's SURVEY (13 September 2025 to 4 January 2026) was the first major museum survey in the United States; and KMSKA Antwerp's Geestgrond, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, runs from 23 May to 20 September 2026.

The honours track the same arc. The Turner Prize in 1994, against Willie Doherty, Peter Doig and Shirazeh Houshiary; the South Bank Prize in 1999; the Bernhard Heiliger Award in 2007; the Obayashi Prize in 2012, the first to a Briton according to the 2025 honours citation; the Praemium Imperiale for sculpture in 2013; OBE in 1997, Royal Academician since 2003, Knight Bachelor in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to the arts and Companion of Honour in the King's Birthday Honours of June 2025, whose citation calls him the UK's most famous sculptor.

Chapter 6

The market: what has actually been paid

The primary market publishes no price bands.

The primary market publishes no price bands. White Cube, Thaddaeus Ropac, Xavier Hufkens and Galleria Continua list exhibitions, not prices, and none is inferred here. The secondary record is short at the top and long in the middle. The auction record is Christie's London, 6 October 2017, lot 14 of the Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction: A Case for an Angel I (1989), a 28-foot winged figure in plaster, fibreglass, lead, steel and air, estimated at GBP 5,000,000 to 7,000,000, hammered at GBP 4,500,000 and sold for GBP 5,296,250 with premium, below the low estimate, to the Japanese collector Yusaku Maezawa, as Artsy reported from the room. The previous record was set at the same house on 14 October 2011, lot 5: Angel of the North (Life-Size Maquette), 1996, number five of five, 533.5 by 200.6 cm, estimated at GBP 1,500,000 to 2,000,000 and sold for GBP 3,401,250 with premium; Christie's does not publish the hammer for that lot. The third maquette had sold at Sotheby's London on 1 July 2008 against an estimate of GBP 600,000 to 800,000.

An Angel of the North was offered at Sotheby's London on 7 March 2018 (estimate GBP 1,500,000 to 2,000,000), and the bronze Angel, an edition of twelve plus one artist's proof at 99 by 262 cm, at Sotheby's New York (14 May 2024, lot 241, estimate USD 2,500,000 to 3,500,000, from the Maharam family, with a provenance of White Cube and a London private collection from October 2002); Sotheby's shows those results only to logged-in users, so they are not recorded here. Below that tier the cast-iron body-forms trade in the low-to-mid six figures: Phillips London sold Meme CXX (2010), a 36 cm cast-iron figure, for GBP 254,000 with premium on 8 March 2024 against GBP 90,000 to 120,000, and the four Peckham Bollards, cast by Hargreaves in 2021, for GBP 86,360 with premium on 11 October 2024 against GBP 15,000 to 20,000. The Meme lot carried the house's symbols for a minimum price guarantee and a third-party guarantee; its provenance is White Cube, London, and the bollards' provenance is the foundry itself. Works on paper start in the low thousands: Bonhams sold a 1995 graphite Angel of the North study for GBP 5,376 with premium on 11 October 2024.

Two things follow from this record. First, the monumental prices attach to the Angel and to the 1989 lead angel, works with a public twin; the body-forms and blockworks that make up most of the output sell for a fraction of them, and the two 2024 results that beat the estimate by a multiple were small lots, one of them sold under a guarantee financed by a third party. Second, every figure above is the house's own published number; where a house withholds the hammer or the result, that gap is recorded rather than filled from a price database.

Chapter 7

Who confirms a work today

There is no catalogue raisonne, no authentication board and no foundation.

There is no catalogue raisonne, no authentication board and no foundation. The authority is the living artist and his studio, whose profile page is the public register of the exhibition history and the collections, and the physical evidence is the underside inscription of initials, date and number that the auction houses catalogue on the casts. The auction record does not show the studio consigning: the two Phillips lots of 2024 trace to White Cube and to Hargreaves Foundry, so the first document in each chain is a gallery invoice or a foundry sale, not a release from the studio.

No faked or misattributed Gormley has been documented in any of the sources consulted for this page, and none of the auction houses' provenances shows a break. The one recorded dispute over an object is the opposite of a question of authorship: the removal and return of public works, treated in the next section. What is unresolved is which body succeeds the studio as the authority. The Sunday Times interview of April 2024, in which Gormley at seventy-three said he had perhaps a fifth or a sixth of his life left, contains nothing about an archive, an estate plan or a foundation, and nothing on those subjects could be found on the studio's site.

Chapter 8

Angels, emigrants and a river gauge: what the works were for

The commissions carry their own stated purposes, and the owners recorded them.

The commissions carry their own stated purposes, and the owners recorded them. Gateshead Council quotes Gormley on the Angel: it has three functions, a historic one to remind us that coal miners worked in the dark beneath the site for two hundred years, one of grasping the future in the transition from the industrial to the information age and one of being a focus for our hopes and fears; the hilltop, he said, had the feeling of a megalithic mound, and the wings are angled 3.5 degrees forward to give a sense of embrace. Sefton Council records that Another Place was, in the artist's 2005 account, a poetic response to the individual and universal sentiments associated with emigration, sadness at leaving but the hope of a new future in another place, and in 2015, in words Sefton's page records, he said he had always wanted it to be an open work, its figures "not statues of ideal or heroic figures from history" but "simply copies of my own body that I used to indicate a human space in space at large".

The materials were chosen for meaning as well as for weather. The Royal Academy's account of Bed sets out the reading the artist has offered: bed is where life begins and ends, bread is the most basic food and, for a Catholic-raised artist, the body of Christ in communion. Field, in his words, takes "the earth of a continent" and registers "the touch of the people that live upon it, allowing it to become a witness of us, the living"; the Arts Council Collection quotes him on twenty-five tons of clay energised by fire, sensitised by touch and made conscious by being given eyes. In Edinburgh the four river figures of 6 TIMES were designed as gauges of the Water of Leith, meant to tilt and go under as it rose, and the National Galleries of Scotland describe the sequence from a figure buried to the neck in the gallery garden to one at the end of a pier looking out to where the river meets the sea. Sound II stands in a crypt that floods, contemplating the water in its cupped hands.

None of this is a hidden programme, and the record should not be made to suggest one. Gormley's stated interests are the body as a place, stillness and the viewer's own position in space, and he has said of Blind Light that inside it you find the outside. The Buddhist practice and the Catholic schooling are documented facts of his formation; what any individual work means beyond what he has said of it is a matter for the critics, whose disagreement is recorded below.

Chapter 9

Removals, floods and the temporary that became permanent

Three of the five works illustrated on this page were at some point gone or nearly gone.

Three of the five works illustrated on this page were at some point gone or nearly gone. Another Place arrived at Crosby in 2005 for the Liverpool Biennial, scheduled to stay eighteen months; Sefton Council records that in November 2006 the statues were expected to move to New York, and that it was later decided they would remain on a permanent basis, with a number of figures moved from their original positions as a planning condition of permanence. The permanence came on a vote: the planning committee had first decided against the work, and on 7 March 2007 it voted nine to five to keep it after revised plans relocated nineteen figures, as the Wikinews report of 8 March 2007 records from the BBC's account. Iron:Man was lifted out of Victoria Square by two cranes on 5 September 2017 to make way for the GBP 149 million Westside tram extension, cleaned by conservators and stored by Birmingham Museums Trust with a return promised for late 2018; Birmingham Live reported its return overnight on 23 to 24 February 2022, photographs on Wikimedia Commons show it back in the square by July 2022, and the city council's current page lists it in place at the lower end of the square. The four river figures of 6 TIMES were taken out in 2012 after what the National Galleries of Scotland calls complications with their tilting mechanism, the repeated topplings that the Edinburgh press reported; the galleries needed the City of Edinburgh Council's permission, an anonymous donor and marine contractors to put them back in 2019, rigidly fixed this time.

The Angel's own history began in opposition. Gateshead's history page says plainly that when Gormley was selected in 1994 his designs originally caused uproar and the material and the site were frowned upon, and that views changed once the work was in place; the timeline then lists the awards, from a National Art Collections Fund award in 1995 to a Civic Trust Award in 2000. Sefton's visitor page also carries a notice that all intellectual property rights in Another Place are held by the artist and that no images may be used for commercial gain; the photographs on this page are reproduced under section 62 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, which permits photographs of sculptures permanently situated in a public place, and the notice is recorded here so that the reader sees both.

Chapter 10

The literature and the critics

The studio's bibliography is the fullest list and runs to several titles a year.

The studio's bibliography is the fullest list and runs to several titles a year. The reference monograph is Martin Caiger-Smith's Antony Gormley (Rizzoli, 2017; second edition 2022); the Royal Academy catalogue of 2019, with texts by Caiger-Smith, Priyamvada Natarajan, Michael Newman and Jeanette Winterson, went to two editions; Antony Gormley on Sculpture (Thames and Hudson) reached a second edition in 2019; Shaping the World, his book-length conversation with Martin Gayford (Thames and Hudson, 2020), has appeared in Chinese, Italian, Japanese and Korean editions; the Musee Rodin catalogue Critical Mass (2023) was co-published by Yale University Press; and 2026 brings Drawing: Antony Gormley (Thames and Hudson, with Margaret Iversen, W.J.T. Mitchell, Daisy Hildyard, Merlin Sheldrake and Winterson) and Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev's Geestgrond for KMSKA.

The critics are divided, and the division is stable. The Royal Academy's own page quotes Simon Schama in the Financial Times calling the 2019 show a symphonic storm of a show and the Evening Standard giving it four stars. The same week, according to a round-up of the reviews, the Observer wrote that the shortfall between the art and Gormley's exalted ambitions for it is typically stark, and that a gallery containing only the metal bar of Co-Ordinate VI had never felt so empty; the Guardian gave three stars and found the musings about bodies and being too unfocused and too polite to land their political punches; the Telegraph, also on three stars, found him more intriguing in abstract than in figurative form. Those lines are quoted from a secondary round-up and should be checked against the original reviews, but the pattern they describe, popular and institutional acclaim against a sceptical strand of London criticism, is consistent from the Turner Prize year, when Tate's own record calls him the popular choice to win.

What is documented

Born
London, 1950.18
Works in
London, in a studio complex north of King's Cross designed by David Chipperfield Architects (2001-03); the studio also owns a foundry at Hexham, Northumberland.5357
First solo show
Whitechapel Gallery, London, 1981.2262
Major prizes
Turner Prize 1994; South Bank Prize 1999; Bernhard Heiliger Award 2007; Obayashi Prize 2012; Praemium Imperiale 2013.501849
Honours
OBE 1997; Royal Academician 2003; Knight Bachelor 2014; Companion of Honour 2025.185152
Galleries
Xavier Hufkens (since 1987), Thaddaeus Ropac (since 1993), White Cube (since 1994), Galleria Continua.39383740
Auction record
GBP 5,296,250 with premium (GBP 4,500,000 hammer), A Case for an Angel I (1989), Christie's London, 6 October 2017.4142
Museum holdings
Tate lists 11 works; Museum Voorlinden 12; Arts Council Collection holds Field for the British Isles; the studio lists over 100 public collections.20295818
Catalogue raisonne
None published; the studio's profile page is the public register of exhibitions, collections and literature.18
Certificates
No certificate or authentication policy is published on the studio site; casts carry initials, date and edition number incised on the underside.194648

Technique

The body-case
The artist wrapped in clingfilm and plaster-soaked scrim, holding the pose for over an hour; the plaster case is the master. Later series use a digital scan of the body, which allows more dynamic poses.2237
Lead works (1980s)
Sheets of beaten lead soldered over a plaster (later plaster and fibreglass) case; the soldering seams are left visible and holes mark the orifices. Tate's Untitled (for Francis) (1985) is lead, fibreglass and plaster; A Case for an Angel I (1989) is plaster, fibreglass, lead, steel and air.222041
Cast iron
Solid figures and blockworks cast at industrial foundries: Hargreaves Foundry, Halifax, has advised and cast for years and the studio now runs its own foundry at Hexham; Iron:Man was cast at Firth Rixon Castings, Willenhall. Each Another Place figure weighs about 650 kg; Time Horizon figures 620 kg at 191 cm.54577635
Inscriptions
Initials, date and edition number incised on the underside of casts (auction cataloguing of Meme CXX and the bronze Angel of the North).4648
Weathering steel
The Angel is Cor-ten steel with a copper content that patinates; 50 mm ribs, 6 mm skin, five horizontal diaphragms and a hollow core, on 150 tonnes of concrete piles 20 m into rock; designed for winds over 100 mph and a life of over 100 years.42
Terracotta multitudes
Field for the British Isles: 40,000 hand-made figures by about 100 people in St Helens, 1993; installed over about a week by volunteers each time it is shown.58
Recent materials
Reinforced concrete cast 55 mm thick at body scale (Retreat, 2022-23); 244 fired-clay body-forms (Resting Place, 2023); rolled black steel; Corten beams; aluminium tube lines (Clearing); clay and seawater floods (Host).3622
Conservation in public
Crosby figures are not cleaned and are meant to weather; the river figures of 6 TIMES were removed in 2012 after repeated problems with their tilting mechanism in floods and re-fixed rigidly in 2019; Iron:Man was conserved and stored 2017-2022 during tram works.6557056

The surviving work

What is accepted
No count of the corpus is published. The studio's profile page lists the solo and group exhibitions from the 1980s to 2026, the public collections (over a hundred institutions) and the bibliography; museum records consulted give Tate 11 works and Museum Voorlinden 12.
What is contested
No attribution is contested in the sources consulted; no faked cast is documented. The contested history is about siting: the 1994 opposition to the Angel, the planned 2006 removal of Another Place, the 2012-2019 absence of the 6 TIMES river figures and the 2017-2022 storage of Iron:Man.
Who rules on attribution
The artist and his studio, London. Physical evidence: initials, date and edition number incised on the underside of casts; gallery invoices from Xavier Hufkens (1987), Thaddaeus Ropac (1993), White Cube (1994) and Galleria Continua. No certificate policy, archive statement, foundation or estate plan is published.

Catalogue raisonne

  • None. The nearest public register is the studio's own profile and bibliography (source 18) and Martin Caiger-Smith's monograph (Rizzoli, 2017; second edition 2022). A catalogue raisonne of a living artist producing editions in iron and bronze would need the studio's inventory; nothing indicates one is in preparation.18
People are always asking, why an angel? The only response I can give is that no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them.Antony Gormley on the Angel of the North, quoted on Gateshead Council's own history page for the sculpture (source 2); it is the commissioning body's record of what the artist told them the work was for.

Questions about Antony Gormley

Who is Antony Gormley?

Sculptor.

Where can you see work by Antony Gormley?

Gateshead Council (Gateshead); Sefton Council (Crosby, Merseyside); Birmingham City Council (Birmingham); Winchester Cathedral (Winchester); National Galleries of Scotland (Edinburgh); Tate (London).

What does the market for Antony Gormley look like?

The published secondary record is two records for angel works at Christie's London (GBP 3,401,250 with premium in 2011, GBP 5,296,250 with premium on a GBP 4,500,000 hammer in 2017), a bronze Angel edition of twelve that Sotheby's has offered in 2014, 2018 and 2024 with results shown only to logged-in users, cast-iron body-forms at Phillips in the low-to-mid six figures in 2024 (one of them under a third-party guarantee) and works on paper in the low thousands. The galleries publish no price bands and none is inferred.

What is still unresolved about Antony Gormley?

What authentication and archive practice does the studio keep? Nothing on certificates, an inventory or an archive is published on its site, and the only public evidence of provenance from the studio is the underside inscription and the gallery invoice.

Open questions

  • What authentication and archive practice does the studio keep? Nothing on certificates, an inventory or an archive is published on its site, and the only public evidence of provenance from the studio is the underside inscription and the gallery invoice.
  • Is there an estate plan or a foundation? The April 2024 Sunday Times interview and the studio site are silent; for an artist with two foundries' worth of casting capacity and editions in iron and bronze, the successor authority is undefined.
  • What did the bronze Angel of the North make at Sotheby's in March 2018 and May 2024? The house publishes the results only to logged-in users; the page records the estimates and leaves the results blank.
  • How large is the corpus, and how many casts exist of each body-form series? No catalogue raisonne exists and edition sizes are known only lot by lot from auction cataloguing.
  • Where are the other three life-size cast-iron maquettes of the Angel (numbers 3 and 5 of 5 have been sold) and the other eleven bronzes (numbers 6 and 10 of 12 plus 1 AP have appeared, number 6 twice, at Sotheby's New York in 2014 and London in 2018)? The cohort is unrecorded beyond those lots.
  • Which of the hundred-plus public collections on the studio's list hold what? Only Tate, Museum Voorlinden, the Arts Council Collection and the National Galleries of Scotland were verified for this page.

Sources

  1. 1Gateshead Council, 'Angel of the North' (council page; read through the Internet Archive capture of 21 November 2025 because the live site sits behind a bot check). gateshead.gov.uk/article/...
  2. 2Gateshead Council, 'The history of the Angel of the North' (archive capture of 3 January 2026). gateshead.gov.uk/article/...
  3. 3Gateshead Council, 'Timeline and awards' (Angel of the North; archive capture of 17 January 2025). gateshead.gov.uk/article/...
  4. 4Gateshead Council, 'Technical' (Angel of the North; archive capture of 30 March 2025). gateshead.gov.uk/article/...
  5. 5Sefton Council, 'Another Place by Antony Gormley' (page last updated 15 August 2024). sefton.gov.uk/anotherplace
  6. 6Sefton Council, 'Another Place - General Information' (page last updated 12 August 2024). sefton.gov.uk/around-sefton/...
  7. 7Birmingham City Council, 'Iron: Man', Statues and public art. birmingham.gov.uk/info/...
  8. 8Winchester Cathedral, 'Art' (history pages), entry on Sound II. winchester-cathedral.org.uk/history/...
  9. 9Winchester Cathedral, 'Crypt Tour' (event page). winchester-cathedral.org.uk/event/...
  10. 10Antony Gormley studio website, 'Angel of the North', Permanent Sculpture (read in the in-app browser after a Vercel JS checkpoint). antonygormley.com/works/...
  11. 11Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, 'Antony Gormley / Pavla Melkova', 5 September 2024 to 5 January 2025. galerierudolfinum.cz/en/...
  12. 12GoOut, 'Exhibition Opening: Antony Gormley / Pavla Melkova', Galerie Rudolfinum, Wednesday 4 September 2024, 7pm; 'Sir Antony Gormley will attend the opening in person.' goout.net/en/...
  13. 13Wikimedia Commons, file page and API record for 'Angel of the North (51218308681).jpg' (LicenseShortName CC0; author Alex Liivet; Flickr review passed 14 November 2021). commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...
  14. 14Wikimedia Commons, file page and API record for '9.4.16 Another Place 04 (26261445102).jpg' (LicenseShortName CC BY 2.0; author Donald Judge; Flickr review passed 2017). commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...
  15. 15Wikimedia Commons, file page and API record for 'Iron Man, Birmingham 2024-07-19 1.jpg' (LicenseShortName CC BY-SA 4.0; author The wub; own work, 19 July 2024). commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...
  16. 16Wikimedia Commons, file page and API record for 'Anthony Gormley's Sound II - Winchester Cathedral.jpg' (LicenseShortName CC BY 4.0; author David Kernan; own work, 30 April 2024). commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...
  17. 17Wikimedia Commons, file page and API record for 'Sir Antony Mark David Gormley (2024).jpg' (LicenseShortName CC BY-SA 4.0; author Jindrich Nosek (NoJin); own work, 4 September 2024, 20:18). commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...
  18. 18Antony Gormley studio website, 'Profile' (biography, honours, solo and group exhibitions, public collections, bibliography), read in the in-app browser on 16 September 2026. antonygormley.com/resources/...
  19. 19Antony Gormley studio website, 'Other Policies': 'Antony Gormley's work is not available as non-fungible tokens (NFTs)'. antonygormley.com/other-policies
  20. 20Tate, artist page 'Sir Antony Gormley OBE RA born 1950' (11 works in the collection; Untitled (for Francis) 1985, Bed 1980-1, Natural Selection 1981, Seed 1985, Space 1986, A Case for an Angel III 1990, Three Ways: Mould Hole and Passage 1981-2). tate.org.uk/art/...
  21. 21Royal Academy of Arts, exhibition page 'Antony Gormley', 21 September to 3 December 2019, Main Galleries, curated by Martin Caiger-Smith with Sarah Lea (read in the in-app browser). royalacademy.org.uk/exhibition/...
  22. 22Amy Macpherson, 'Antony Gormley: 10 works to know', Royal Academy of Arts, 14 August 2019 (read in the in-app browser). royalacademy.org.uk/article/...
  23. 23Musee Rodin, Paris, exhibition page 'Antony Gormley: Critical Mass', 17 October 2023 to 3 March 2024. musee-rodin.fr/en/...
  24. 24Hayward Gallery / Southbank Centre, 'Antony Gormley: Blind Light' story on Google Arts and Culture, giving the dates 17 May to 19 August 2007; and Southbank Centre magazine, '10 iconic exhibitions from 50 years of Hayward Gallery', 6 July 2018. artsandculture.google.com/story/...
  25. 25Southbank Centre, '10 iconic exhibitions from 50 years of Hayward Gallery', 6 July 2018 (Blind Light 2007 'his first major showing in a London public gallery'; Event Horizon on rooftops and Waterloo Bridge). southbankcentre.co.uk/magazine/...
  26. 26Artlyst, 'Antony Gormley Hermitage Installation Still Standing', 12 September 2011 (State Hermitage Museum, 23 September 2011 to 15 January 2012; nine classical sculptures and seventeen iron blockworks in the Small Classical Courtyard). artlyst.com/antony-gormley-hermitage-installation-still-s...
  27. 27White Cube, exhibition page 'Antony Gormley: Still Standing', Hoxton Square, 13 July to 15 September 2012 (blockworks previously shown at the State Hermitage Museum, 2011). whitecube.com/gallery-exhibitions/...
  28. 28Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, 'Gormley / Lehmbruck: Calling on the Body', 23 September 2022 to 26 February 2023, curator Soke Dinkla. lehmbruckmuseum.de/ausstellungen/...
  29. 29Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, 'Antony Gormley - GROUND', 26 May to 25 September 2022 (the museum holds twelve works by Gormley, including a sculpture made for the Clingenbosch sculpture garden in 1994). voorlinden.nl/exhibition/...
  30. 30National Gallery Singapore, past exhibition 'Antony Gormley', 6 August 2021 to 12 February 2023, Ng Teng Fong Roof Garden Commission (Horizon Field Singapore 2021 closed 15 January 2023). nationalgallery.sg/sg/...
  31. 31Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence, 'Antony Gormley. Essere', Aula Magliabechiana, 26 February to 26 May 2019, curated by Eike Schmidt and Max Seidel. uffizi.it/en/...
  32. 32NEON, 'SIGHT | Antony Gormley on the island of Delos', 2 May to 31 October 2019, with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades; curated by Iwona Blazwick and Elina Kountouri; 29 iron bodyforms. neon.org.gr/en/...
  33. 33Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, 'SURVEY: Antony Gormley', 13 September 2025 to 4 January 2026, 'the first major museum survey of Antony Gormley's work in the United States'. nashersculpturecenter.org/art/...
  34. 34KMSKA - Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, press page on the 2026 programme: 'Antony Gormley: Geestgrond', 23 May to 20 September 2026, curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. kmska.be/en/...
  35. 35Houghton Hall, Norfolk, exhibition page 'Antony Gormley: Time Horizon', 21 April to 31 October 2024 (100 cast-iron figures, 620 kg, average 191 cm, one datum level). houghtonhall.com/exhibitions/...
  36. 36White Cube, exhibition page 'Antony Gormley: Body Politic', White Cube Bermondsey, 22 November 2023 to 28 January 2024. whitecube.com/gallery-exhibitions/...
  37. 37White Cube, artist page 'Antony Gormley' (first White Cube solo exhibition Lost Subject, Duke Street, 1994; list of White Cube solo shows to 2025). whitecube.com/artists/...
  38. 38Thaddaeus Ropac, artist page 'Antony Gormley' (first solo exhibition Learning To See, Salzburg Villa Kast, April to May 1993; solo shows to 2023). ropac.net/artists/...
  39. 39Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, artist page 'Antony Gormley' ('Gormley's long-term relationship with Xavier Hufkens dates back to its founding year in 1987'; first show April 28 to May 30, 1987). xavierhufkens.com/artists/...
  40. 40Galleria Continua, artist page 'Antony Gormley' (San Gimignano and Beijing exhibitions; installation views of Essere 2019 credited to the gallery). galleriacontinua.com/artists/...
  41. 41Christie's, lot page 'Antony Gormley (B. 1950), A Case for an Angel I', Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction, London, 6 October 2017, sale 14442, lot 14: estimate GBP 5,000,000 to 7,000,000, price realised GBP 5,296,250 (Christie's figure includes buyer's premium). christies.com/en/...
  42. 42Artsy Editorial, 'Christie's Notches GBP 84 Million Sale Despite No Takers for GBP 60 Million Bacon', October 2017 (A Case for an Angel I hammered at GBP 4.5 million, GBP 5.2 million with fees, bought by Yusaku Maezawa; read in the in-app browser). artsy.net/article/...
  43. 43Christie's, lot page 'Antony Gormley (b. 1950), Angel of the North (Life-Size Maquette)', Post-War and Contemporary Art Evening Auction, London, 14 October 2011, sale 7990, lot 5: estimate GBP 1,500,000 to 2,000,000, price realised GBP 3,401,250 (includes premium); 533.5 x 200.6 cm. christies.com/en/...
  44. 44Art Observed, 'AO Auction Results - London: Post War and Contemporary Art Auction at Christie's', 16 October 2011 (the maquette 'is number five in an edition of five'; artist record; the third maquette sold at Sotheby's London in July 2008). artobserved.com/2011/...
  45. 45Phillips, lot page 'Antony Gormley, Peckham Bollards (Peg, Snowman, Penis and Oval)', Modern and Contemporary Art Day Sale, London, 11 October 2024, lot 175: conceived 2001, cast by Hargreaves Foundry 2021, cast iron in four parts, estimate GBP 15,000 to 20,000, sold for GBP 86,360 (Phillips 'sold for' figures include premium); provenance: Hargreaves Foundry, United Kingdom, acquired from the above by the present owner. phillips.com/detail/...
  46. 46Phillips, lot page 'Antony Gormley, Meme CXX', 20th Century and Contemporary Art Day Sale, London, 8 March 2024, lot 126: cast iron, 2010, 36.1 x 9.8 x 5.1 cm, estimate GBP 90,000 to 120,000, sold for GBP 254,000 (includes premium); provenance: White Cube, London, acquired from the above by the present owner; lot symbols: minimum price guarantee, third-party guarantee. phillips.com/detail/...
  47. 47Bonhams, lot page 'Antony Gormley (b. 1950), Angel of the North (executed in 1995)', Post-War and Contemporary Art, London, New Bond Street, 11 October 2024, lot 38: graphite on paper, 29.5 x 21 cm, sold for GBP 5,376 including premium; provenance from Newcastle University Fine Art Department. bonhams.com/auction/...
  48. 48Sotheby's, lot page 'Antony Gormley, Angel of the North', Contemporary Day Auction, New York, 14 May 2024, lot 241: bronze, 1997, number 10 of 12 plus 1 AP, 99 x 262.3 x 20 cm, estimate USD 2,500,000 to 3,500,000; provenance White Cube, London; result shown only to logged-in users. sothebys.com/buy/...
  49. 49Praemium Imperiale, laureate page 'Antony Gormley' (25th Praemium Imperiale, Sculpture, 2013). praemiumimperiale.org/en/...
  50. 50Tate, 'Turner Prize 1994' (winner Antony Gormley; shortlist Willie Doherty, Peter Doig, Shirazeh Houshiary; exhibition 2 November to 4 December 1994; jury including Nicholas Serota). tate.org.uk/whats-on/...
  51. 51UK Government, 'New Year's Honours 2014' list (CSV): 'Mr Antony Mark David GORMLEY OBE, Sculptor. For services to the Arts.' Knight Bachelor. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/...
  52. 52UK Government, 'The King's Birthday Honours List 2025 - High Awards' (PDF): Companion of Honour, 'Sir Antony Mark David Gormley OBE ... the UK's most famous sculptor'. assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/...
  53. 53David Chipperfield Architects, project page 'Gormley studios', London, 2001-03, client Antony Gormley, 1,000 square metres, seven-bay structure with workshops for welding and casting. davidchipperfield.com/projects/...
  54. 54Phil Penfold, 'The story of the Halifax iron foundry that has worked with big names like Sir Antony Gormley', Yorkshire Post, 1 February 2020 (Hargreaves Foundry, Water Lane, Halifax, founded 1881; Michael Hinchliffe on advising Gormley and on his own forge in Northumberland; read in the in-app browser). yorkshirepost.co.uk/heritage-and-retro/...
  55. 55National Galleries of Scotland, 'Antony Gormley's 6 TIMES returns to Edinburgh', 17 May 2019 (commissioned by NGS with the Art Fund, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Patrons of the NGS, Claire Enders and the Henry Moore Foundation; six cast-iron figures 191 x 50 x 36 cm; 'Permanent installation'; four elements removed in 2012 and reinstalled in 2019 'permanently fixed to their mounts'; read in the in-app browser). nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/...
  56. 56West Midlands Combined Authority, 'Iron: Man kicks off next phase of Midland Metro tram expansion', 5 September 2017 (six-tonne sculpture lifted out of Victoria Square by two cranes, cleaned by conservation specialists and stored by Birmingham Museums Trust for the GBP 149 million Westside extension). wmca.org.uk/news/...
  57. 57Kirsty Lang, 'Antony Gormley: I've got a sixth of my life left. I don't want to waste it', The Sunday Times, 7 April 2024, reprinted by Thaddaeus Ropac (the King's Cross studio; the foundry at Hexham, Northumberland, bought to keep it open, 23 staff at the time, seven retained and combined with seven art-school trained makers; Time Horizon commissioned in 2006 for an archaeological site in Catanzaro province). ropac.net/news/...
  58. 58Arts Council Collection, 'Artwork in Focus: Field for the British Isles', 24 February 2020 (made in 1993 by about 100 people aged seven to seventy from St Helens; 40,000 terracotta figures; purchased 1996 with the Henry Moore Foundation and the National Art Fund; the largest work in the collection; a week to install; over 500,000 visitors). artscouncilcollection.org.uk/explore/...
  59. 59Love London Love Culture, 'Review Round Up: Antony Gormley, Royal Academy of Arts', 23 September 2019 (tertiary: quotes the Observer, Guardian (three stars), Telegraph, Time Out, Evening Standard (four stars) and i reviews; to be replaced by the primary reviews). lovelondonloveculture.com/2019/...
  60. 60Wikimedia Commons, 'Iron Man sculpture by Anthony Gormley, Victoria Square, Birmingham - July 2022.jpg' (own work by Mutney, 9 July 2022, CC BY-SA 4.0): photographic evidence that the sculpture was back in Victoria Square by July 2022. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...
  61. 61Wikimedia Commons, file page and API record for 'Antony Gormley 6 Times statue in Powderhall, Edinburgh (portrait).jpg' (LicenseShortName CC BY-SA 4.0; author Mike Shaw; own work, 17 February 2021). commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/...
  62. 62The European Graduate School, biography 'Antony Gormley' (tertiary: Ampleforth College; Trinity College, Cambridge 1968-71; India and Sri Lanka 1971-74; Central Saint Martins, Goldsmiths and the Slade; first solo exhibition Whitechapel Gallery 1981). To be replaced by a primary source. pact.egs.edu/biography/...
  63. 63Stuart Hillcock, 'Antony Gormley: Sound II', Ecclesiart listing, Art and Christianity (1986; fibreglass, lead, water; 188 x 60 x 45 cm; Winchester Cathedral crypt; 'a contemplative figure which sometimes stands in water when the crypt floods'). artandchristianity.org/ecclesiart-listings/...
  64. 64Gateshead Council, 'Construction' (Angel of the North; archive capture of 14 April 2025): the sections travelled on the night of 14 February 1998 at 10 mph; at dawn a 500 tonne crane lowered the body onto 52 three-metre bolts in twenty minutes; assembling the sculpture took an entire day. gateshead.gov.uk/article/...
  65. 65Wikinews, 'Gormley's statue Another Place stays in Sefton, UK', 8 March 2007 (tertiary; drawn from BBC News, 'Gormley's statues stay out to sea', 7 March 2007, and Alan Weston, 'Iron Men win full-time Place', Liverpool Daily Post, 8 March 2007): the planning committee, having earlier decided against the work, voted nine to five to keep it after revised plans relocated 19 figures (13 from around the coastguard station, three for emergency access, the rest from the bird-feeding area); the Maritime and Coastguard Agency still wanted the work removed. To be replaced by the BBC report, which was unreachable when this page was edited. en.wikinews.org/wiki/...
  66. 66Sotheby's, e-catalogue lot page 'Antony Gormley, Angel of the North', Contemporary Art Evening Auction, London, 7 March 2018 (sale L18020), lot 10: bronze, 1997, number 6 of 12 plus 1 AP, 96.5 x 262.9 x 20.3 cm, estimate GBP 1,500,000 to 2,000,000; provenance White Cube, London; private collection, USA; Sotheby's New York, 15 May 2014, lot 445; result shown only to logged-in users. sothebys.com/en/...
  67. 67Sotheby's, e-catalogue lot page 'Antony Gormley, Angel of the North (Life-size Maquette)', Contemporary Art Evening Auction, London, 1 July 2008 (sale L08022), lot 10: cast iron, 1996, number 3 of 5, 199.4 x 533.5 x 33.6 cm, estimate GBP 600,000 to 800,000; provenance White Cube, London; result shown only to logged-in users. sothebys.com/en/...
  68. 68Sotheby's, e-catalogue lot page 'Antony Gormley, Angel of the North', Contemporary Art Day Sale, New York, 15 May 2014 (sale N09142), lot 445: bronze, 1997, number 6 of 12 plus 1 AP, 96.5 x 262.9 x 20.3 cm, estimate USD 800,000 to 1,200,000; provenance White Cube, London; result shown only to logged-in users. sothebys.com/en/...
  69. 69The Scotsman, 'Gormley statues duck out of sight', 23 July 2010: two of the six 6 TIMES figures toppled by torrents four weeks after installation; the four river figures are fitted with a pin mechanism that topples them to avoid damage or blocking debris; NGS spokesman on the mechanism; commission cost GBP 400,000 (read in the in-app browser). scotsman.com/news/...
  70. 70Edinburgh Evening News, 'Edinburgh police warned as humanoid sculptures return to Water of Leith', 9 May 2019: four of the six statues had a pin mechanism that toppled them; in 2012 they had to be removed completely to rectify repeated problems with the tilting mechanisms; fixings modified so the sculptures are permanently fixed to their mounts (read in the in-app browser). edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/...
  71. 71Graham Young, 'Iron Man statue secretly returned to Victoria Square overnight', Birmingham Live, 24 February 2022: removed on 5 September 2017 and returned overnight on 23 to 24 February 2022, with Birmingham City Council's statement (read in the in-app browser). birminghammail.co.uk/whats-on/...
Cite this pageIconotheca, “Antony Gormley”, The Provenance Record, iconotheca.com/artists/antony-gormley/, version of 16 September 2026.

Last verified 16 September 2026

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