Antony Gormley: Transport
Title: Transport
Artist: Antony Gormley (b. 1950, British)
Location: Canterbury Cathedral (C of E)
Date: 2011
This work was shortlisted for the ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context 2011.
‘Antony Gormley’s Transport in Canterbury is a large and striking human figure, created from iron nails formerly in the roof of the Cathedral. It is suspended three metres above the floor of the site of the first burial place of St Thomas Becket in the Eastern Crypt. [...] This is a beautifully made and very clever piece of work which impresses by its technical accomplishment’ (The Very Revd Nicholas Frayling, Chair of the judging panel for the ACE Award for Art in a Religious Context, 2011).
The antique nails re-used in Transport point both outwards and in, suggesting both the Holy Nails with which Jesus was fastened to the Cross and the Crown of Thorns. The figure floats, rotating with the flow of air and the movement of people below. The saint’s martyrdom is shown to be in imitation of Christ, and is at the same time brought into a two-way connection with the contemporary visitor.
Gormley has written of the sculpture, ‘The body is less a thing than a place; a location where things happen. Thought, feeling, memory and anticipation filter through it, sometimes staying but mostly passing on, like us in this great cathedral with its centuries of building, adaptation, extension [...]. We are all the temporary inhabitants of a body. It is our house, instrument and medium. Through it, all impressions of the world come and from it all our acts, thoughts and feelings are communicated. I hope to have evoked this in the most direct way possible.’
British sculptor Antony Gormley (b. 1950) has become synonymous with British contemporary sculpture inciting a regeneration of interest in the human form on both intimate and monumental scales. Gormley is best known for his solitary metal figures that even when installed in groups retain their sense of solitude and reflection. Gormley describes his work as ‘an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live.’ Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or ‘the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside.’ Among his best-known works are the Angel of the North in Gateshead, Quantum Cloud on the Thames in Greenwich and Blind Light exhibited at The Hayward Gallery in 2007. Gormley has exhibited at the Venice Biennale and Documenta 8. He was the recipient of the Turner Prize in 1994.
Further Information
Medium: Metal
Permanent display
See Antony Gormley’s Transport on the Ecclesiart map here.
Commissioner: Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral
Other artworks in churches by Antony Gormley: Sound II in Winchester Cathedral
Other works of modern and contemporary art in Canterbury Cathedral: St Anselm’s altar (2005), Stephen Cox; Scenes from the Life of Saint Martin of Tours (altarpiece) (1928–33), Winifred Knights; statue of Christ on his throne (1990), Christ Church gate, Klaus Ringwald; Becket altar and sculpture (1986), Giles Blomfield; windows (1959), St Anselm’s Chapel, Harry Stammers; windows (1960), southeastern transept, Ervin Bossanyi, holy water stoup (2010), Stephen Cox.