Slump

Executed in 2012, and acquired by the present owner the following year, Slump is a striking work from Antony Gormley’s celebrated series of Blockworks. Rendered from blocks of cast iron on an imposing life-sized scale, it offers a pixelated vision of the human body, slumped upon its shoulders in a headstand-like pose. The work formed part of Gormley’s major solo exhibition at White Cube, London, between 2012 and 2013, which he described as the ‘culmination of 32 years of exploration’, and notably featured the unveiling of his monumental work Model (A. Gormley, quoted in video for Antony Gormley: Model, White Cube, London, 2012). Occupying the corridors of the gallery, Slump and its companions were inspired by poses explored in Gormley’s 1995 installation Critical Mass, as well as the imagery of the incarcerated asylum inmates in Peter Weiss’ 1963 play Marat/Sade. Throughout his practice, the artist has asked the viewer to reflect upon how his sculptures interact with their environments, in turn prompting questions about the way in which we inhabit our own bodies. Simultaneously echoing and interrupting its surroundings, the present work exemplifies this approach: the body ceases to exist as an object, inviting us to consider it instead as a space.

Gormley has spoken of his Blockworks in comparison to the work of Carl Andre, who similarly drew upon ideas about spatial interaction and displacement. By continuously evoking the human body, however, he seeks to transcend purely formal concerns, inviting the viewer to engage with his works on an emotional, psychological level. ‘The works put the formal purity of Modernist abstraction to work, to evoke human states of mind’, he explains. ‘Using the language of stacking, propping and cantilevering, they produce a somatic sense of containment, mirroring that which exists our urban environment’ (A. Gormley, quoted at https://antonygormley.com/sculpture/item-view/id/286#p0). Elsewhere, he elaborates that ‘The success of any one work depends on there being an absolute tension between the sharp material clarity of the steel blocks, and a sense of vulnerability and exposure in the gestalt’ (A. Gormley, quoted at https://www.antonygormley.com/sculpture/item-view/id/221). In Slump, the figure is at once abstract and deeply poignant: an architectural structure that slots neatly between wall and floor, and a visceral expression of the state invoked by the work’s title. As we contemplate its form, we are prompted to reflect upon the sensation of being contained by our own bodies, and by the spaces that surround us.