Antony Gormley’s Sculpture for Dublin
While I’m a huge fan of Antony Gormley and in particular Angel of the North I’m not convinced that the scale of his proposed work for Dublin’s docklands is entirely appropriate. A human form of that scale in such a tight urban setting actually dimishes the innate human scale intrinsic in that setting, for example the implied human form and scale in the size and shape of a park bench, a doorway, the width of a pedestrian crossing (and a central concern in Gormley’s earlier work). The Angel of the North works so well in that it is unbounded by urbanity and talks down the post-human scales of modern British motorways, while nodding to the human as engineer and the implied Icarus-like failure that may lurk in our grand projects such as those motorways.
The docklands proposal is intimidatingly big. A graphic in today’s Irish Times places it at a head with Liberty Hall and twice the height of the Angel. Perhaps Gormley is seeking a different dynamic to the one I’ve identified, but I think this is a great sculpture in the wrong setting.
