黑料不打烊

Field for the British Isles (1993) is an installation piece comprising around forty thousand individual terracotta figures. Each one is unique and is simply fashioned, with holes for eyes. The figures completely occupy the space in which they are installed, filling the space so the viewer can look at the figures, but cannot enter the space they occupy. It is the largest single artwork in the Arts Council Collection.  

Gormley has described Field as 鈥樷��twenty-five tons of clay energised by fire, sensitised by touch and made conscious by being given eyes鈥�a field of gazes which looks at the observer making him or her its subject. For the artist 鈥楩ield鈥� is like a living organism: like water it settles in place, it doesn鈥檛 organise it.鈥欌��  

Field for the British Isles鈥痺as made by Gormley in 1993 with 100 volunteers from Merseyside who were each given a portion of clay and instructions for the size and shape he wanted for the figures. To create the work the artist collaborated with Tate Liverpool and pupils from two schools in St Helens in Merseyside (Sutton Community High and Sherdley County Primary) along with their families and others living in the vicinity. This collaborative process  has always been key to Gormley鈥檚 concept of his Field works. The figures were fired at a local brickmaking company, who also supplied the clay.  

The process of working with about 100 people took a week. In the artist鈥檚 words, 鈥淭hat repeated action of taking a hand-sized ball of clay, squeezing it between your hands, standing it up and giving it consciousness becomes meditative, the repeated action becoming almost like breathing, or a heartbeat鈥�. The individual figures range in size from 8 to 26 centimetres in height. The artist described the process of making the work as 鈥渁 kind of harvesting 鈥� it鈥檚 about tilling the earth with your hands but instead of making something grow it is the earth you are forming directly. The harvest comes from within the people, or the thing that is growing comes out of the people鈥�.