About this Event
For the second conversation of Echo, curator Iwona Blazwick invites British sculptor Antony Gormley to discuss the story behind the site-specific exhibition SIGHT on the Greek island of Delos. Echo is a series of conversations with some of the world’s leading artists giving insight into their creativity while revealing the echoes of the past civilizations that resonate in their work, curated by Iwona Blazwick. Gormley will be joined by Dimitris Daskalopoulos, founder of NEON. Based in Athens, NEON is dedicated to bringing contemporary art closer to the public and is renowned for commissioning artists from around the world to create works in public spaces and historic sites. NEON since 2013 has collaborated with public sector bodies as well as public and private institutions such as the Greek National Opera and has organized and curated major exhibitions, including Portals and Dream On at the former Public Tobacco Factory in Athens.
Since the 1980s Antony Gormley’s sculptures, installations and drawings have reinvented figurative sculpture. From tightly contained body cases to expansive, architectonic environments, his works take his own body as the springboard to investigate what it means to be sentient. Gormley’s sculptures also have a totemic quality that links them with antiquity.
In 2019 NEON invited and commissioned the artist to create a temporary work for the Greek island of Delos. Once a thriving civilisation, the centre of trade for the Hellenic world and the mythical birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, by 800 AD it had been abandoned. Yet its houses, markets, stores and temples remain, occupied only by the breezes lifting off the Aegean Sea. In 2019 the entire island became the setting for an unprecedented site-specific exhibition curated curated by Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director, Whitechapel Gallery and Elina Kountouri, Director NEON. Titled SIGHT, it comprised 29 life sized iron figures, made by Gormley during the last twenty years, including 5 new works specially commissioned by NEON, in an astonishing play of form, mass, balance, and perspective. In his placing of figures, he also considered deeply the psychic energy haunting this Greek ruin – from the dread of a captive in the slave market, to the devotion of the temple goer.
Image: Antony Gormley, RULE, 2018, Installation view, Delos, Greece, 2019, Photograph by Oak Taylor-Smith, Courtesy NEON Foundation and Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades © the artist
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
The Hellenic Centre, 16-18 Paddington Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 2.88 to GBP 3.96
