 at Houghton Hall, Antony Gormley distributes 100 life-size sculptures across 300 acres of the park. The cast iron sculptures, each weighing approximately 640 kg and standing at an average of 191cm, are installed at the same datum level to create a single horizontal plane across the landscape. Some works are buried, allowing only a part of the head to be visible, while others are buried to the chest or knees according to the topography. Only occasionally do they stand on the existing surface. Around a quarter of the works are placed on concrete columns that vary from a few centimetres high to rising four meters off the ground.

‘My ambition for this show is that people should roam far and wide. Art has recently privileged the object rather than the experience that objects can initiate. 

 is not a picture, it is a field and you are in it. The work puts the experience of the subject/visitor/protagonist on an equal footing with all material presences, organic and inorganic. The quality of the light, the time of the year, the state of the weather and the condition of your mind, body and soul are all implicated in the field, as is all the evidence within it of human activity already accomplished as well as the plethora of life forms that surround the hall.’ — Antony Gormley 

Houghton Hall

, 2006, cast iron, 100 elements, each 189 × 53 × 29 cm. Photograph by Theo Christelis.

, 2006, cast iron, 100 elements, each 189 × 53 × 29 cm. Photograph by Pete Huggins.


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