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Another Place - Antony Gormley |
The other day I went a bit off track. I trailed after Gormley and then hit the scandal at Ampleforth College. Well this latest diversion was well worth it. I traced a path through Gormley's work, questioning why did his statues have to be of his own bodily form. I understood his motive about the relationship of the space we occupy in regards to our bodies. But all I could think about was those statues, quite a few of them on the Crosby Beach, staring out to sea. It was on the whole a tranquil scene, the mind could fall into that state of peace. His four horses and men down in the muddy waters of the Thames again had that feeling of eeriness and maybe loneliness but I began to see in his art work repetition of a singular idea.
The Angel of the North is a large undertaking, apparently when it was moved to the spot it now lives in, the convey was huge, the pavements lined with people. It has of course an industrial message. The death of industry, the great shipyards of the North-East became bankrupt and business moved to other countries.
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Space as a concept, and as something that we fill, is seen by Christopher Alexander an American architect as something that is alive, his death seems to have cut short his latest book on latent centers but he has written several other books exploring ideas.
I was first introduced to him by my son who had on his reading list for university (computer course) Alexander's books 'A Pattern Language and the four volumes of 'The Nature of Order'.
These four books were filled with photographs of many things, to do with the house, household and the very fabric of creating everything, I suppose. And indeed I looked at the books more for the photographs than the words. But of course there are many patterns in life from physics and the make-up of all those quarks and things from outer space. And who hasn't been surprised at the mathematical Fibonacci numbers, a sunflower will explain it to you because I can't.
But the reason I turned to Alexander was because of his thinking on space which developed from his career as an architect. How do you fill space in your life? what makes you happy?
Those cast iron statues looking out to sea from eyes that cannot see. Our minds are whisked to eternity as we contemplate them, the endless movement of the tides, the life that flows through the water - the world is a living breathing being. Our ability to destroy it is obvious but then simple logic tells us, humans in their greedy grasping way will destroy it anyway and in so doing will eventually destroy themselves and the Earth will recover albeit in a different form maybe but then for now it has shucked off those annoying ant like creatures that have been tickling its surface.
Will technology save us, or a quick lift up to the moon? I doubt it. So I will leave it there, and see if Alexander has anything to offer.
"For Alexander, feeling alive is tied to being in spaces or environment that have an inherent quality of life. Space that resonates with humans, that are harmonious and evoke a sense of well being, make the occupants feel more alive. The feeling of aliveness is the core benchmark with which Alexander measured the quality of human made artifacts."
To be continued: