''Field'' (1991) is a sculpture by
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies.
** Britishness, the British identity and common culture
* British English, ...
artist
Antony Gormley. It consists of approx. 35,000 individual
terracotta
Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based unglazed or glazed ceramic where the fired body is porous.
In applied art, craft, construction, and architecture, terracotta ...
figures, each between 8 and 26 cm high, installed on the floor of a room facing the viewer. The figures were sculpted in
Cholula,
Mexico
Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
by about 60 members of a Texca family of brickmakers, under the supervision of the artist. The sculpture received a lot of media attention upon its first display, and many affectionate parodies.
''Field'' has been installed and displayed at various locations. The specific configuration is changed to suit each location, but the miniature figures are always placed to form a dense carpet with each figure looking towards the viewer. Ideally the Field is extended through a doorway or round a corner, so that the figures going out of sight leave the impression of an unlimited horde.
Several other versions of ''Field'' have subsequently been created, including
*''Amazonian Field'' (1991) made in
Porto Velho
Porto Velho (, ''Old Port'') is the capital of the Brazilian state of Rondônia, in the upper Amazon River basin, and a Catholic Metropolitan Archbishopric. The population is 548,952 people (as of the IBGE 2021 estimation). Located on the border of ...
,
Brazil
Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
(approx. 24,000 figures)
*''Field for the British Isles'' (1993) made in
St Helens near
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...
in the
UK (approx. 40,000 figures)
*''European Field'' (1993) made in
Östra Grevie,
Sweden (approx. 40,000 figures)
*''Asian Field'' (2003) made in
Xiangshan County, Guangdong
Xiangshan County, also spelled Hsiangshan, Siangshan, Heungsan, and Heungshan, was a former county in Southern China. Since 1912, it was a county in Kwangtung Province ("Guangdong"), in the Republic of China. It was renamed Zhongshan County (then ...
,
Guangdong
Guangdong (, ), alternatively romanized as Canton or Kwangtung, is a coastal province in South China on the north shore of the South China Sea. The capital of the province is Guangzhou. With a population of 126.01 million (as of 2020) ...
province,
People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
(approx. 190,000 figures)
*''Field for the Art Gallery of New South Wales'' (1989)
''Field for the British Isles'' was typical in recruiting some 100 volunteers from the pupils and their extended families, of two local schools in
St Helens. Each volunteer was given a portion of the 30 tonnes of clay required, along with some loose instructions specifying the rough size and proportions for the figures. An accidental feature of the original Field was that Texca family involved people aged from 6 to 60 working on the figures, and Gormley felt that the involvement of three generations of a family should be continued in all the subsequent versions.
Gormley has also made several other works entitled ''Field'', but these are smaller groups of life size figures more typical of Gormley's earlier work.
In 1994, Gormley won the
Turner prize
The Turner Prize, named after the English painter J. M. W. Turner, is an annual prize presented to a British visual artist. Between 1991 and 2016, only artists under the age of 50 were eligible (this restriction was removed for the 2017 award) ...
with a collection of his work, including ''Field for the British Isles'', shown at the
Tate Gallery
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
.
References
External links
Antony Gormley's Official siteOverview of the ''Field'' project''Field'' at the Tate Liverpoolin 2004
review of ''Field for the British Isles'', exhibited at the British Museum in 2002.
{{Antony Gormley
British art
Installation art works
Outdoor sculptures
Sculptures by Antony Gormley
1991 sculptures
Terracotta sculptures