6 Times Sky

Executed in 2009, 6 Times Sky is a poignant and contemplative example of Antony Gormley’s most recognised motif: his own body.

The present work belongs to Gormley’s ‘6 Times’: a series comprising six life-size figures that were commissioned by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art to stand between the gallery’s grounds and the sea at Leith Docks, Edinburgh. Another cast of the present work is permanently installed in the Water of Leith, with the flowing river rushing against it. Typical of Gormley’s oeuvre, the bodies are life-size and cast in iron. Each sculpture in the series gazes in a different direction, referenced in their individual titles (6 Times Ground, 6 Times Right, 6 Times Horizon, for example); in the present work, the figure looks upwards, towards the sky.

Encouraging contemplation and reflection, 6 Times Sky quietly draws attention to the natural and man-made environment of the Water of Leith, a bubbling river that passes through the heart of Edinburgh’s city centre. The viewer is encouraged to consider how human beings fit into the natural and social environments that they inhabit. Considering this, Gormley said of the works: ‘They are simply objects that have been humanly made, that are for imaginative purposes, but are liberated from the special condition of the museum and allowed to stand for themselves in the elemental world, completely unprotected, and that bareness of exposure is matched … by a bareness that is to do with human vulnerability. It demands of the viewer a degree of, in a way, the active exercise of curiosity. So the standard view is ‘what the hell is this work doing here?’ but of course, implicitly, the work is asking that same question back to the viewer and within that there becomes a kind of circularity.’ (A. Gormley quoted in Antony Gormley: 6 Times, National Galleries of Scotland, 2010).

Gormley sees his working process as a vital part of the sculpture’s presence: ‘I don’t hide the fact that they are industrially produced, and you could say that what I’ve tried to do is fold this notion of industrial production with the idea of, in a way, individual life. The rust for example, people have difficulty with rust, for most people it represents neglect, decay and decrepitude. For me, it’s a very important principle of acceptable entropy and it’s a huge privilege for me to be able to do this in this place. They will change in time’ (ibid).