0:00:26 > 0:00:31Sculpture, of its nature, is about changing the world
0:00:31 > 0:00:35because it's about putting things into it that weren't there before.
0:00:38 > 0:00:43And to that little bit of the world, the setting of the world is changed.
0:01:04 > 0:01:10The reason that I use my own body is that I want to enquire into what
0:01:10 > 0:01:17being a temporary inhabitant of this materialised space feels like.
0:01:20 > 0:01:27You may think it's a fundamentally narcissistic, terrible project.
0:01:27 > 0:01:29What on Earth am I doing?
0:01:31 > 0:01:33But I hope that it's other things as well.
0:01:43 > 0:01:49When people ask me, what is this place, on the one hand,
0:01:49 > 0:01:55it's a community, it's a community of people that like making things.
0:01:55 > 0:01:58Sometimes it's a bit like a hospital, sometimes it's a bit
0:01:58 > 0:02:03like a play school, sometimes an institution for the mentally infirm.
0:02:05 > 0:02:09It has to be a place that is in the world but somehow not of it.
0:03:44 > 0:03:48The history of the body in sculpture...
0:03:51 > 0:03:57..probably starts with the brothers Pisano in Pisa in the 14th century.
0:03:57 > 0:04:03It's the history of putting the body to work, telling a story.
0:04:05 > 0:04:09Political stories, stories about power.
0:04:10 > 0:04:15I have no interest either in the idealised body
0:04:15 > 0:04:19or in the body used as an actor in the narrative.
0:04:20 > 0:04:25I'm interested in the body as a place, a place that we all live.
0:04:30 > 0:04:35What is that space that we inhabit when we close our eyes,
0:04:35 > 0:04:41that seemingly allows us infinite extension?
0:04:43 > 0:04:47It's the same as gazing out into the cosmos in the night sky.
0:04:50 > 0:04:51Perfect.
0:04:53 > 0:04:56All right.
0:04:59 > 0:05:05The change that has happened very rapidly in the last,
0:05:05 > 0:05:12really, nine months, is that we're now making scans directly from life.
0:05:12 > 0:05:14Now it's much more immediate.
0:05:14 > 0:05:18Instead of it taking one and a half hours to mould,
0:05:18 > 0:05:23we can do it in a matter of minutes and get the information back,
0:05:23 > 0:05:26and then build that into a working process.
0:05:26 > 0:05:30Do you want the fist connected to the head?
0:05:30 > 0:05:32Yeah, that would be fine.
0:05:32 > 0:05:36- Maybe under the chin might be quite helpful, actually.- Like that?- Yeah.
0:05:36 > 0:05:37- OK, let's do it.- OK.
0:05:39 > 0:05:42- OK?- Yeah.
0:05:45 > 0:05:49Yeah. These are not, in my view, self-portraits.
0:05:50 > 0:05:54My body is just my raw material,
0:05:54 > 0:06:02and we go to work with it as one would a piece of wood.
0:06:09 > 0:06:12- This is the other one. - It's come out nice.
0:06:16 > 0:06:18It's nice.
0:06:18 > 0:06:22- That's more... - That's more introverted.
0:06:22 > 0:06:29- But it gives a sense of the arms.- I think that will work well in books.
0:06:37 > 0:06:40Got a nice shiver about it, hasn't it?
0:06:40 > 0:06:45- I mean, it really does have a shiver. So this is this pose.- Yeah.
0:06:45 > 0:06:48It does work, that one.
0:06:48 > 0:06:51This is a similar issue, but I think it's really good.
0:06:56 > 0:06:59This is odd. Er...
0:07:02 > 0:07:09Just the hand position is just very difficult to get.
0:07:09 > 0:07:11I couldn't really...
0:07:11 > 0:07:16- Well, the funny thing is it looks like this.- And it's not that at all.
0:07:16 > 0:07:19But it's difficult to have a chest block
0:07:19 > 0:07:25and have any description in hands and forearms and stuff.
0:07:29 > 0:07:34You know, this is the machine that we use to catch the shadow,
0:07:34 > 0:07:39to make the impression, to take the trace.
0:07:39 > 0:07:43You know? This is the fingerprint that is actually a body print
0:07:43 > 0:07:48that is captured by bits and bytes and zeros and ones.
0:07:48 > 0:07:52We're using the ability of this technology to capture
0:07:52 > 0:07:57a fugitive moment of lived time,
0:07:57 > 0:08:00and use that shadow,
0:08:00 > 0:08:02that dark space,
0:08:02 > 0:08:08that, in a way, very impermanent thing
0:08:08 > 0:08:11as the basis for
0:08:11 > 0:08:19making something that is adamantine, that resists time, that has presence.
0:09:31 > 0:09:34I don't know quite why I put on this apron,
0:09:34 > 0:09:42but I've always put it on when I'm painting, drawing,
0:09:42 > 0:09:50so I do it as a sort of ritual more than...
0:09:50 > 0:09:56I mean, sometimes it can get messy, but this isn't messy work.
0:09:56 > 0:10:00This is quiet work.
0:10:12 > 0:10:20It's nice to be able to have a place where you can be still.
0:10:33 > 0:10:39I lost my first studio in 1987 in the great wind.
0:10:39 > 0:10:46A 30-foot high wall crushed it, and I lost about a year and a half's work.
0:10:48 > 0:10:54So, this is the third studio I've made, and it's the best.
0:10:55 > 0:10:58But each of them were an attempt, in a different way,
0:10:58 > 0:11:08to create the space, the light and the silence necessary for making art.
0:11:23 > 0:11:25I was brought up by monks,
0:11:25 > 0:11:30and I think there is a part of me that is indelibly touched
0:11:30 > 0:11:34or formed by that idea - s mixture of silent contemplation,
0:11:34 > 0:11:42active work and then some kind of labour that is between the two.
0:11:57 > 0:12:04This end of the building, I think is a necessary balance, I think,
0:12:04 > 0:12:09to the pragmatism. I mean, we can hear it, can't we?
0:12:09 > 0:12:11We can hear the grinders.
0:12:11 > 0:12:17Yesterday we could hear the clinking as of church bells,
0:12:17 > 0:12:19but actually, it was Jamie and his...
0:12:19 > 0:12:20BUZZER
0:12:20 > 0:12:23And we can hear the front door like that, going,
0:12:23 > 0:12:27so we're not, as it were, totally isolated,
0:12:27 > 0:12:32but on the whole, people know when I'm down this end that it's...
0:12:32 > 0:12:36Here we go, see? It's quite private.
0:12:36 > 0:12:41- Hey. Fantastic. How are you? - Hello. I'm fine, Tony.
0:12:41 > 0:12:47- You're looking so well.- Yeah, really? - Yeah, yeah. So nice to see you.
0:12:47 > 0:12:51Sui is an old friend from... well, from...
0:12:51 > 0:12:54He has been working in Beijing
0:12:54 > 0:12:56and teaching in the academy there,
0:12:56 > 0:13:02and he has similar concerns
0:13:02 > 0:13:05about the body and about space.
0:13:05 > 0:13:09You should see, I'm doing my own expansions. I want to show you.
0:13:09 > 0:13:14I want to show you, because they're not strictly the same as yours.
0:13:14 > 0:13:16Will you be coming back upstairs to have coffee?
0:13:16 > 0:13:19Oh, yeah, maybe we'll have a coffee up there. That's fine.
0:13:19 > 0:13:22- Have a walk around first. - You leave that there. It's fine.
0:13:52 > 0:13:56Pierre, can we show them the incremental expansion?
0:13:56 > 0:13:58- The way it works? - Yeah, the way it works.
0:13:58 > 0:14:00- OK, as an example?- Yeah, yeah.
0:14:00 > 0:14:01Um...
0:14:02 > 0:14:08So this was for me a meditation on the idea of cosmic expansion,
0:14:08 > 0:14:11you know, the dimension of space itself is expanding,
0:14:11 > 0:14:18so as a result of the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago,
0:14:18 > 0:14:24the scale of space is increasing the whole time.
0:14:24 > 0:14:27I like that idea, that if we make objects,
0:14:27 > 0:14:33the context of this object is always infinitely expanding.
0:14:33 > 0:14:38Here is a scan, then we translate it into this mesh,
0:14:38 > 0:14:42and then that mesh is then translated
0:14:42 > 0:14:47into this loose constellation of forms.
0:14:47 > 0:14:54The centroid of each of these masses remains absolutely fixed,
0:14:54 > 0:14:58even though their space, as it were, is expanding,
0:14:58 > 0:15:01and that idea of the cosmological constant
0:15:01 > 0:15:05or what has now become known as the Hubble constant,
0:15:05 > 0:15:10the application of cosmological rules
0:15:10 > 0:15:15to the intimate space of the body is what this is all about.
0:15:16 > 0:15:21You will always end up finally with a cube,
0:15:21 > 0:15:27like your dipping will always end up finally as a perfect sphere.
0:15:29 > 0:15:36Sui Jianguo has been dipping a paintbrush in paint every day.
0:15:36 > 0:15:38Every day, yeah.
0:15:38 > 0:15:42As a ritual. Before he begins work, he dips this.
0:15:42 > 0:15:47- And now it weighs how much? - 30 kilos.
0:15:47 > 0:15:5113 kilos, and is the size of a head.
0:15:51 > 0:15:54The colour is always different or..?
0:15:54 > 0:15:56Colours, I try to stay,
0:15:56 > 0:16:02but sometimes we have change.
0:16:12 > 0:16:17I think the primary drive in the making of sculpture
0:16:17 > 0:16:23is to inscribe on an indifferent universe
0:16:23 > 0:16:28some indication that we were here,
0:16:28 > 0:16:32and it's a futile attempt,
0:16:32 > 0:16:37but it's what led to the making of the Pyramids,
0:16:37 > 0:16:43the making of the moai on Rapa Nui, the making of Stonehenge.
0:16:43 > 0:16:48We know that in the truth of geological time,
0:16:48 > 0:16:52our lives are as dust...
0:16:54 > 0:17:00We have consciousness and they have eternity, or something close
0:17:00 > 0:17:08to what a rock has, the capability of enduring time longer than we do,
0:17:08 > 0:17:11and they wait for us.
0:17:11 > 0:17:14They wait for our feeling, our thought,
0:17:14 > 0:17:18our freedom of movement, and our projection,
0:17:18 > 0:17:21and that's what all great, I think,
0:17:21 > 0:17:28I mean, sculpture that calls to us, that appeals to us.
0:17:30 > 0:17:38I think the works in many ways are like nets or traps
0:17:38 > 0:17:46that are waiting for us to be caught in them, with them.
0:17:50 > 0:17:58We may say, wait away, boy, you're living in a delusional universe.
0:18:05 > 0:18:10These are kind of boxes, exploding boxes,
0:18:10 > 0:18:16so this is a 500 millimetre expansion of me standing,
0:18:16 > 0:18:23- with my hands like this.- Yeah.
0:18:23 > 0:18:26This one is quite Chinese, I think.
0:18:26 > 0:18:31This is, like, one of the Ming... you know the Ming tomb?
0:18:31 > 0:18:37- The scholar, you know, with his long sleeves.- Yeah.
0:18:40 > 0:18:45But you have to imagine it's like a forest,
0:18:45 > 0:18:47and that you can walk through.
0:18:47 > 0:18:55Some are less expanded, like this one, and, and it's five rows of 12...
0:18:55 > 0:19:01in this Renzo Piano building made for Paul Klee.
0:19:11 > 0:19:16- Have we got the things?- Yeah, yeah. - Oh, let's have a look.
0:19:18 > 0:19:22How do I open this? Oh, right.
0:19:22 > 0:19:25So this is the model, this is exciting,
0:19:25 > 0:19:33this is the model of the field. We modelled them in little chaps.
0:19:35 > 0:19:41This is plaster - plaster with super glue?
0:19:41 > 0:19:44Yeah, it's got some hardener on it.
0:19:44 > 0:19:47I'm not sure what it is.
0:19:47 > 0:19:49- Are you coming up?- Yeah.
0:19:57 > 0:20:03This space is unbelievable. I mean, it really is unbelievable.
0:20:14 > 0:20:17- The scale range is crazy, isn't it? - Yeah.
0:20:17 > 0:20:21Is this true, this guy, or is he a bit big?
0:20:21 > 0:20:24I think he's about a third too big, isn't he?
0:20:24 > 0:20:29- He's a metre 95.- Oh, is he?- Yeah.
0:20:29 > 0:20:35I immediately want to do some chess moves here.
0:20:39 > 0:20:42They seem to be, er...great.
0:20:42 > 0:20:45I'm so excited.
0:20:45 > 0:20:50I mean, this is going to be absolutely amazing, isn't it?
0:20:50 > 0:20:53I mean, in terms of...
0:20:53 > 0:20:59In a way, it's more extreme than I imagined because of this.
0:20:59 > 0:21:04I mean, the big ones are really extraordinary, aren't they?
0:21:04 > 0:21:07It creates a space. It is very different.
0:21:09 > 0:21:13So these are the few of our new...
0:21:20 > 0:21:25So you have this opportunity of seeing it as a singular,
0:21:25 > 0:21:27in a way, whole thing,
0:21:27 > 0:21:33and then you can come in and move around it.
0:21:45 > 0:21:52You can feel the beginning, little root hairs of possibility,
0:21:52 > 0:21:57at the scan, at the computer, at the model stage,
0:21:57 > 0:22:01but hopefully, it goes all the way through, then you kind of
0:22:01 > 0:22:06have your big moment as you make the thing that you've been dreaming.
0:22:06 > 0:22:11Suddenly, it's no longer an idea, it's a thing or place,
0:22:11 > 0:22:16and you experience it yourself as the viewer.
0:22:21 > 0:22:24I mean, I think that whole issue about whether you want to have
0:22:24 > 0:22:29readable progressions, or whether you want to have...
0:22:29 > 0:22:34I prefer this, where it's actually mixed.
0:22:34 > 0:22:36Um...
0:22:41 > 0:22:44So here is the man with the erection.
0:22:45 > 0:22:49We had to do that just to have the full range of extensions.
0:22:49 > 0:22:52If you have arms out, arms up...
0:22:52 > 0:22:58Um... Yeah, this is the arms out.
0:23:02 > 0:23:05Very, very exciting.
0:23:19 > 0:23:21Took 40.
0:23:28 > 0:23:33I'm just trying to get a feel. It's really...
0:23:38 > 0:23:43You spend so much of your time, in a way, plotting,
0:23:43 > 0:23:45but then the real proof of the pudding
0:23:45 > 0:23:47is you've got to walk the walk,
0:23:47 > 0:23:51and with something like this, it's terrifying.
0:23:51 > 0:23:55You know, the Paul Klee Museum, you may think this is quite big,
0:23:55 > 0:23:57but they are twice as high,
0:23:57 > 0:24:05and this big arc of the ceiling, nothing is square. Um...
0:24:05 > 0:24:10And I want to make... It's got to be tight, it's got to be hard.
0:24:10 > 0:24:12Everything there is curved.
0:24:12 > 0:24:14Even the planks in the floor are curved.
0:24:14 > 0:24:19And this has got to be tough and dark and hermetic.
0:24:19 > 0:24:26And, um... I've got to get it right.
0:24:50 > 0:24:56They don't feel very, um, consistent, actually, but they are.
0:25:22 > 0:25:24Almost as soon as they're made,
0:25:24 > 0:25:30they take their place in the family of made things,
0:25:30 > 0:25:34and they're not mine any more.
0:25:55 > 0:26:01To be a real artist is quite a tough thing.
0:26:01 > 0:26:05I mean, I think it's not something that you decide at the age of six.
0:26:09 > 0:26:14I mean, you know, funny,
0:26:14 > 0:26:17I'm frightened of that word "success" in a sense
0:26:17 > 0:26:23cos I think it suggests a kind of contentment
0:26:23 > 0:26:27or job well done,
0:26:27 > 0:26:34now I can get my slippers and put the crumpets on or something.
0:26:34 > 0:26:39And I don't think that's the way it works.
0:26:44 > 0:26:48The first ten years were very, very hard, and very lonely,
0:26:48 > 0:26:52and I delight in the fact that I work in company,
0:26:52 > 0:26:58and I'm no longer in ill-lit, damp, ex-industrial spaces,
0:26:58 > 0:27:01and I rejoice in it.
0:27:01 > 0:27:05I just think it's absolutely the best thing that could have happened,
0:27:05 > 0:27:08that I'm joined in my madness by others
0:27:08 > 0:27:11that seem happy to be infected by it.
0:27:11 > 0:27:16In a way, this is the lie to the accusation of self-indulgent
0:27:16 > 0:27:21whatever, because I don't think they would identify
0:27:21 > 0:27:26what we are doing as being to the greater glory of some individual
0:27:26 > 0:27:28called Antony Gormley.
0:27:28 > 0:27:32And I feel immense privilege, gratitude, joy
0:27:32 > 0:27:35in the life of this studio.
0:27:35 > 0:27:37It's wonderful.
0:27:37 > 0:27:42It isn't a family but it's akin to the closeness that you feel
0:27:42 > 0:27:48with individuals and the same degree, I hope, of trust and care.
0:27:59 > 0:28:03We're here for such a short time.
0:28:04 > 0:28:11And in the interests of making a true testimony to what it
0:28:11 > 0:28:18feels like to be alive now at the beginning of the 21st century,
0:28:18 > 0:28:22I am trying to make a true account.