NEW WORKS BY GORMLEY AT HAREWOOD THIS SUMMER

Work in Progress at the Foundry (Photo Colin Davison)

Two new pieces of work by the internationally renowned sculptor Antony Gormley will be unveiled at Harewood House this summer.

Harewood is one of the nation’s premiere venues for contemporary arts with the pieces on show in The Terrace Gallery from 13 August to 30 October. The Terrace Gallery was the first designated contemporary art space to be created in the setting of an English country house, and Harewood has hosted ground-breaking exhibitions in this space ever since.

Gormley’s work ranges from major public works, one-man shows to public participation pieces and you’ll see his works as far and wide as St Petersburg, Mexico, Beijing and Australia. The Angel of the North is one of his most well-known works.

Antony Gormley’s Two States will follow Harewood’s recent exhibition Finding Adam: Epstein and Harewood, and will be a nod to the relationship between the two artists’ work as Epstein was a key early influence on the development of Gormley’s art.

Gormley says: ‘I am delighted to have the opportunity to show two works at Harewood House, which has long been associated with Adam, Epstein’s powerful evocation of masculine yearning carved from a massive block of English alabaster.

‘My material is iron. Smelted and cast, it also engages with the block but uses the language of architecture to interpret the male human body as an unstable space made up of individual cells fused and propped together.

‘The room in which the works will be shown is supported by four stone columns that make you aware of the load path of the building. I hope that these two works, in which columns and masses describe an unsteady vertical stack twisting through 90 degrees, will allow the viewer to feel and think about his or her own body as an unsteady vertical mass in space.’

A short film will accompany the exhibition at Harewood, documenting the making of the works including an exclusive interview with Antony Gormley.

Two States will run from 13 August until 30 October 2011