Seeing and Being Seen: The dialectics of intimate space and Anthony Gormley’s ‘Event Horizon’

Abstract

In this paper the author describes through a series of interviews the impact of a certain group of sculpted figures by Antony Gormley, set high on buildings around the South Bank and the City of London. They came, caused a public stir, and then went again, in spite of a signed petition asking that they remain in place.  Through the interviews she wished to find out something about how we all have an intimate and personal response to public sculpture, and how these responses might also tell us something about universal wishes as well as fears, about falling and flying, living and dying. Many of the interviewees responded enthusiastically to being asked questions about their reactions, and the author suggests that this way of interviewing, designed to ‘surprise the unconscious’ is one way of examining how we react to what we experience in an urban environment.