Thirty-one sculptures currently dotted around Hong Kong involve citizens in a game of seeking, as artist Antony Gormley’s work explores the relationship between imagination and the horizon
Event Horizon, the most extensive public art installation ever seen in Hong Kong, was officially launched in November last year, and will be a part of the Hong Kong cityscape for six months, until May 18.
Thirty-one sculptures by British artist Antony Gormley have been installed at both street level and building tops across a kilometre-wide zone of the Central and Western districts on Hong Kong island. The work was originally conceived in 2007 when, for the first time, over half of the planet’s human population was recorded as living in cities.
“The principal dynamic of the work is the relationship between imagination and the horizon, involving the citizen in a game of seeking and perhaps finding. Beyond those figures that you can actually see, how many more are out of sight?” says Gormley. “I hope that through the work, we will look at the city, its relationship to its natural surroundings and the language of the buildings themselves – colonial, corporate, institutional, public – and their dialogue one with the other. One of the functions of the work is to make us more aware of the texture and meaning of the environment around us,” he adds.
Presented by the British Council Hong Kong with support from lead partner the K11 Art Foundation (KAF), Hong Kong is the first Asian city to stage the installation following presentations in London, Rotterdam, New York, São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
“We invite people of all walks of life to appreciate the art installation. When we look up and see the sculptures, we are encouraged to stop, engage, and perhaps reflect on our individual position in this wonderful city by looking more consciously within ourselves,” says Robert Ness, Director of the British Council Hong Kong.
The installation will be complemented with a strong education and outreach programme, which includes dedicated activities and support tools for students, teachers and the general public. The aim is to encourage discussion of art in the city and the development of skills such as creative thinking, critical thinking and visual literacy.
Born in London in 1950, Antony Gormley’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and internationally, with permanent public works including Angel of the North (Gateshead, England), Another Place (Crosby Beach, England), Inside Australia (Lake Ballard, Western Australia) and Exposure (Lelystad, The Netherlands).
Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) and was made a knight in the New Year’s Honours list in 2014. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an Honorary Doctor of the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003.
“Isolated against the sky in Hong Kong Island Central District where densely spaced and densely occupied towers rise up between mountains and sea, these still and silent bodies look out into space, asking where the human project fits in the scheme of things. This installation questions how the built world relates to an inherited earth, and was originally conceived in the year in which it was first reported that half the planets human population were living in cities.”
“The sculptures are indexical copies of my body; they indicate a particular time of a particular body: a subjective place that could be anybody’s but indicates a human space within space at large. The title originates from cosmological physics and refers to the boundary of the observable universe. Because the universe is expanding, there are objects that will never be visible, as their light will never reach us. The works remind us of our relationship with deep space and they gaze out towards the horizon: the meeting between sky and earth invisible to us on the street. The horizon is our perceptual limit, our final skin. There is always the question that beyond those figures that you can actually see, how many more are out of sight, quietly witnessing events beyond our view?”
“Event Horizon engages the desire to look up and look again at familiar places in a new way. Within the condensed environment of Hong Kong, the tension between the palpable, perceivable and imaginable is heightened. My intention is to get the sculptures as visible as possible against the sky, allowing each to be seen as a body against light and space, entering in and out of visibility to those walking the streets. The installation should have no defining boundary. This is an acupuncture of the city that connects it to space at large. In the process of seeking and finding (or seeking and perhaps not finding) perhaps we can re-assess our own position in the world.”
Antony Gormley
