Collectively, Gormley argues that these casts “ask us to reconsider our relationship to both space and time, and they do it in this quite recent, historical and political British context. They do so by not being grand gestures but simply ‘bodies in space’ – “not doing anything,
without any rhetorical gesture, simply saying here is a register, an index, of human beings that invites you to register your own.” The result is “you then become a subject of a field and perhaps are encouraged to reflect on your own experience.”
It is also for this reason the landscape and the positioning of the casts are extremely important. Their placement in the undulating landscape references the geologic effect of the Pleistocene age on the landscape and grounds which were subsequently modified by the contemporary landscape architect William Kent. To be clear, Gormley finds the modifications made by Kent – which he regards as beautiful – are “superficial to what was left by the chalk, geological formation layers that were previously laid down.” And thus, it is in relationship to the casts that the experience “makes you aware of the visible surface of things is, maybe, less important than, as it were, the inherited topography that comes from deep time.”
At the end of the day, Gormley’s hope is sculpture becomes “a reflexive instrument in which the first-hand palpable experience of the
viewer becomes, in a way, the subject under examination.”
(see:
https://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/antony-gormley-video-interview-time-horizon-houghton-hall-norfolk)
The Experience
It is against this backdrop of Gormley’s own words and his invitation for visitors to think for themselves that we must attest to our own experience and to what that experience brought to our thinking.
First among these is the fact Gormley has also gone on record as saying the “iron men are not statutes but players,” which have been placed on the ground to “interrogate the surface of things.” His argument being: this ‘reinforces contemplative awareness in the viewer.’
It certainly did so with us. It is hard to describe the feeling we had when walking through the grounds, looking first to locate just one cast – the first one of which came high above us, over the brick wall of the garden (see photo). Then, looking for what we knew would be a second but not readily finding it, even though we understood it, too, would be found within the same walled garden.
By consequence, we were soon distracted by the neatly trimmed hedges within whose squares and rectangles were placed not just flowers and fountains and structures but other sculptures. For people who love nature and find gardens to express and expand upon the notion of Nature through human intervention, it was as if the second cast iron figure announced himself to us in a "playful" way. There he was, not responding to a call but presenting himself, standing bright red against the backdrop of a large green tree situated outside the garden. Thus started the game of hide-and-seek, though in reverse. The cast iron figures were seeking us, hidden as we were amongst the grounds and the people.
For example, leaving the walled garden, we stopped for coffee in an outlier building with a formal inner courtyard and fountain. Surrounding the courtyard was a café, a store full of merchandise, and a room featuring an
installation by the US based land artist James Turrell. No where was a cast iron figure to be found. Nor was there one to be found as we exited the building and walked under a leafy canopy of espaliered lime trees, which delivered us to the grounds of the estate set at a slightly higher elevation.
It was only when we saw the first outline of Houghton Hall and then moving around one of the trees situated on the more manicured green grass lawn that framed the more formal front of the Hall itself that we saw within our line of
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