Antony Gormley

This Cultural Life

For over forty years, the sculptor Sir Antony Gormley has been using his own body as the basis for his artistic work, and is known for creating cast iron human figures that stand on high streets, rooftops and beaches, as well as in museums and galleries around the world. He won the Turner Prize in 1994 and the prestigious Premium Imperiale in 2013. Antony Gormley is best known for the Angel Of The North, a monumental winged figure on a hill in Gateshead which, overlooking the motorway and a mainline railway, is one of the most viewed pieces of modern art in the world.

He talks to John Wilson about his Catholic childhood and the influence that his former art teacher, the sculptor John Bunting had on him while he was at boarding school. Being taken by his father to the British Museum and seeing the colossal human-headed winged bulls, which once guarded an entrance to the citadel of the Assyrian king Sargon II (721-705 BC) captured his creative imagination. Gormley also chooses the life-changing experience of learning Vipassana meditation in India under the teacher S N Goenka, as one that has deeply informed his work.

Producer: Edwina Pitman

Archive: The Shock of the New : The Future That Was, BBC 2, 1980 Nightwaves, BBC Radio 3, 1994 BBC News, 1998 Five Sculptors : Antony Gormley, BBC2, 1988