Antony Gormley

Private Collection, Australia

Melbourne, Anna Schwartz Gallery, MEMES, 17th March - 23rd April 2011, un-numbered catalogue, illustrated.

Structurally sound. The surface texture is in keeping with the artist's original condition The work appears in excellent overall condition. Please telephone the department on +44 (0) 207 293 6424 if you have any questions regarding the present work.
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We are grateful to the Artist's studio for their kind assistance with the cataloguing of the present work.

Gormley is an artist for whom size and scale form an integral aspect of his working practice. These themes have remained of immediate concern and interest throughout his career, as displayed across his oeuvre, from his largest commission to date, the iconic Angel of the North (1998) through to the smallest and most delicate of his sculptures, the MEMES; small, solid iron works that use the formal language of architecture to replace anatomy and construct volumes to articulate a range of body postures. Each work from the series of 33 separate little figures is made up of 27 identical blocks, positioned in a unique way to form the figure and create a different character displaying recognisable human physical emotions and traits.    

The title of the series is taken from Richard Dawkins’ theory, in which he coined the term ‘memes’ on the basis of genes, and used to describe the dissemination of cultural ideas and beliefs. They become forms that are transmitted in thought or behaviour from one body to another, each responding to conditional environments, self-replicating and capable of mutation. They become units of cultural information that propagate from one mind to another, evoking a multitude of possible expressions through the varying formation of the 27 individual blocks. Placed directly on the cold, grey gallery floors of the Anna Schwartz Gallery for their first en-masse exhibition in 2011, the lexicon of body postures and possible expressions displayed invited the viewer to become conscious, through the disparity of scale, of his or her own mass and spatial displacement. The figures display a multitude of possibilities both through their individual formation and their positioning within a group or family: when grouped together there is a sense of their communication and dialogue with each other and when viewed separately they come to represent an atomised society, one which the viewer is looking down on, standing as a godly figure.

Gormley’s tiny MEMES make us question what a shift in the position of the blocks might represent, both as separated figures and through their groupings within the space, but also through their multitude of differing expressions, recognised through the varying physical stances that the figures take, standing tall or cowering from some unseen terror. The artist invites us to view them, both separately as individuals and as figures in relation to their surroundings, all the while enjoying the very human personalities that they come to embody.