Art will challenge you, ask questions and generates new ideas in how you think. As you navigate through life, art allows you to stop, think and take in your surroundings. By asking questions, artwork provokes you to provide an answer to what you see before you. However, there are no right or wrong answers and you must be content with your own interpretation of what you see. Opening yourself up to the art before you, leads to increased creativity. In my photography, such opportunities lead to different inventive approaches to composing my pictures.
Antony Gormley is an artist whose work will challenge you and ask such questions. His metallic sculptures are modelled on his own human form and have been installed in several locations. The Angel of the North near Newcastle and the statues from “Another Place” on Crosby beach are probably his most recognisable installations. The statue that I encounter when visiting Birmingham is Iron:man in Victoria Square. The backwards and slightly tilted to the side cast iron figure watches over people who pass by on their way through the Square. I have photographed iron:man throughout the years. Another work that I often visit in London is “reflection” near to Euston Station. In 2015, one of his statues was placed at the locks opposite the Lengthman’s Cottage, Lowsonford, Warwickshire. This was on the occasion to celebrate 50 years of the Landmark Trust. I do enjoy his artwork so when I learned that the art installation Time Horizon was coming to Houghton Hall in Norfolk then I knew I had to visit.
Fortunately I have an old school friend who lives in Norwich and I availed myself on his hospitality as a base to visiting Norfolk. Photographing Norwich is in a separate blog and shows the picturesque area around the Cathedral. Either day or night the place has much to see and photograph.
Arriving at Houghton Hall, I found that there was a queue to enter the property. In my nativity, I had wrongly assumed that not many people would be there. As I waited around 20 mins to enter the carpark I now knew how popular this exhibit was. Several of the statues were visible around the entrance and this only served to increase my anticipation about the visit. The car park attendant told me that I had brought the weather with me and advised that I went to see the walled garden first before embarking on the rest of the sights. This was good advice as the flower displays and the setting of the walled gardens was thrilling to behold. There were two of Antony Gormley’s statues in the walled garden set on pedestals overlooking everyone.
There are several areas of Houghton Hall to access and you are guided initially from the walled garden through the Stables to the Hall. It is here that you start to encounter more of the cast iron figures many of whom are set into the ground. Their presence is at first interesting and then as you encounter more of the cast iron figures, you begin to ask more questions about how the statues are set up. Some are facing the Hall, whilst others have their back to the buildings. Why are some figures buried to the neck whilst others are more exposed. This last question is answered by the lay of the land as each figure is at the same level with the datum statue. Within the house there is one solitary figure which is buried to the hips. This statue is the datum which is used to create a single horizontal plane across the landscape. I found this difficult to comprehend as I took so many pictures of the statues and tried to understand the horizontal level across all 100 sculptures. On my wanderings around the grounds, one person stopped me and asked why are the figures facing different ways. He was perplexed by this feature of the installation. I also noticed that people were fascinated with the details of the body and pictures of either the appendages or the buttocks were very popular with the visitors. I took several pictures of the front and behind of the statues to work out what was the fascination. See if you can guess why.
I walked many steps and took in as many of the sculptures that I could find. Photographing them was fun as I attempted to capture them in their surroundings and bring the natural environment where they are placed into play. Interactions with people was high on my list of photographs to take. This was a form of street photography where you could juxtaposition people with the surroundings. The beautiful surroundings brought out the best in the installation and I enjoyed the contrasts between the carefully manicured lawns of the estate to the woodlands where the sculptures were in a natural woodland setting.
There were many other installations present and I particularly liked the Waterflame by Jeppe Hein in the walled garden and the Axis of the World by Claudio Parmiggiani. However there were countless others that are set into pleasing surroundings around the Hall and Gardens.
Soon I became saturated with what I had seen and the urge to take any more photographs disappeared. There was a long drive home but I was pleased that I had seen the “Time Horizon” and looked forward to processing all my photographs. I hope you like my selection.
Here is the official site with details of the Time Horizon.
In this blog of Lockmaster’s cottages on the canals near me, the final picture shows the Antony Gormley statue celebrating the anniversary of the Landmark Trust.
