Antony Gormley: Time Horizon

21 Apr-31 Oct 2024

Overview

Time Horizon, one of Antony Gormley’s most spectacular large-scale installations, is shown across the grounds and through the house at Houghton Hall in Norfolk- the first time the work has been staged in the UK.

Featuring 100 life-size sculptures, the works are distributed across 300 acres of the park, the furthest away being approximately 1.5 miles on the West Avenue.  The cast-iron sculptures, each weighing 620kg and standing at an average of 191cm, are installed at the same datum level to create a single horizontal plane across the landscape.  Some works are buried, allowing only a part of the head to be visible, while others are buried to the chest or knees according to the topography.  Only occasionally do they stand on the existing surface.  Around a quarter of the works are placed on concrete columns that vary from a few centimetres high to rising four meters off the ground.

Antony Gormley is one of the most important artists of his generation and is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space.  His work has been exhibited throughout the UK and internationally.

Antony Gormley said: ‘My ambition for this show is that people should roam far and wide.  Art has recently privileged the object rather than the experience that objects can initiate.  Time Horizon is not a picture, it is a field and you are in it.  The work puts the experience of the subject/visitor/protagonist on an equal footing with all material presences, organic and inorganic.  The quality of the light, the time of the year, the state of the weather and the condition of your mind, body and soul are all implicated in the field, as is all the evidence within it of human activity already accomplished as well as the plethora of life forms that surround the hall.’

Lord Cholmondeley, owner of Houghton Hall, said: ‘We are excited to have the opportunity to show this large-scale work by Antony Gormley for the first time in the UK.  The 100 life-size sculptures will cover a much larger area than our previous shows, allowing visitors to experience more of the historic landscape surrounding the house.  There should also be an interesting dynamic between Time Horizon and our exhibition of Dame Magdalene Odundo's ceramic and glass work, which will open later in the season.’

Houghton Hall was built by Sir Robert Walpole, Great Britain’s first Prime Minister, in around 1722.  Designed by prominent Georgian architects Colen Campbell and James Gibbs, it is one of the country’s finest examples of Palladian architecture.  Houghton and its estate passed to the Cholmondeley family at the end of the 18th Century and remains a family home.  The house and award-winning gardens have been open to the public since 1976.

The Houghton Arts Foundation continues to build a collection of contemporary art at Houghton including a number of site-specific commissions.  With links to colleges and public institutions across the region, the Foundation’s aim is for Houghton to become a focus for those who wish to see great art of our time in a historic setting.  The 2024 exhibitions by Antony Gormley and Magdalene Odundo follow those by James Turrell (2015), Richard Long (2017), Damien Hirst (2018), Henry Moore (2019), Anish Kapoor (2020), Tony Cragg (2021), Chris Levine (2021) and Sean Scully (2023).

Artists