When you are standing around doing nothing in particular, it’s nice to stack your arms on top of your head. Suddenly you are a sculpture: you can feel those weights and measures ­­̶ not as they can be depicted, but as they are.

The series started with the idea of building using physical pixels. Small blocks have turned into ever bigger blocks and description has given way to the realisation that the way one block sits on top of another can carry the feeling of inhabiting a body. At this larger scale, what the blocks do to each other is the critical thing. Material mass and the orthogonal forms are used to evoke internal states. Like standing stones, I see them as markers in space, but I would also like them to engage with time: each work in its different way calls on the viewer to simultaneously project and recognise internal affinities in the attitude carried by the block piles. Here is sculpture, not statue; less hero or ideal, more material and real: a declaration of subjective identity. [N.B. this extra text is extracted and adapted from your Philadelphia statement]

‘[Gormley] proceeded according to the structural logic of building itself – of load and support – propping and stacking, balancing and cantilevering blocks, seeking an equation between the expressive language of body posture and the rigour of geometric architectural form, pushing the body to the point of abstraction and aiming for the greatest economy of means, the minimum number of elements to describe each form. This led to a crucial step – to a finding of body form with blocks of irregular size, which carried their own individual form and logic, positioned to describe the body rather than filling the designated space of a body mould with a regular set of volumes.’

, exh. cat., Salzburg: Galerie Thaddeaus Ropac, 2013, p.24)

Big Blockworks

, 2013, cast iron, 331 × 57.5 × 50 cm. Installation view, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg, Austria. Photograph by Ulrich Ghezzi.

Big Ward

, 2013, cast iron, 308 × 63.5 × 45 cm. Photograph by Charles Duprat.

Big Witness

, 2013, cast iron, 297 × 77 × 64.5 cm. Photograph by Todd-White Art Photography.

Big Gut

, 2014, cast iron, 302.5 × 57 × 61 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Big Crib

, 2014, cast iron, 303 × 77 × 49.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Big Seize

, 2014, cast iron, 297 × 73 × 68 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Big Gut II

, 2014, cast iron, 313 × 58.5 × 54.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Big Assay

, 2014, cast iron, 294 × 64 × 82 cm. Photography by Stephen White, London.

Big Shuck

, 2014, cast iron, 312.5 × 73 × 87.5 cm. Installation view, White Cube Bermondsey, London, UK. Photograph by Benjamin Westoby.

Big Prop II

, 2014, cast iron, 309 × 65.5 × 54.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Big Pluck

, 2014, cast iron, 312 × 63.5 × 45 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Big Hunch

, 2014, cast iron, 311.5 × 69 × 55.5 cm. Photograph by Stephen White, London.

Big Space

, 2014-15, cast iron, dimensions variable. Installation view, White Cube Bermondsey, London, UK. Photograph by Benjamin Westoby, London.

Big Blockworks

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