Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. Upon completing a degree in archaeology, anthropology and the history of art at Trinity College, Cambridge, he travelled to India, returning to London three years later to study at the Central School of Art, Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Art, concluding his postgraduate studies in the mid 1970s.
Using his own body as a starting point, Gormley’s work is largely concerned with the investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation, exploring the human condition, collective body and the relationship between the self and the so-called ‘other’ in large-scale installations such as Allotment, Critical Mass, Another Place, Domain Field, Inside Australia and most recently, Blind Light.
Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994 and the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999 and was made an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1997. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Trinity College, Cambridge and Jesus College, Cambridge, and has been a Royal Academician since 2003. His work has been exhibited extensively, throughout the UK and internationally, with solo in venues such as the Whitechapel, Tate, the Hayward Gallery and the British Museum. He has participated in major group shows such as the Venice Biennale and the Kassel Documenta 8. Angel of the North and, more recently, Quantum Cloud on the Thames in Greenwich are amongst the most celebrated examples of contemporary British sculpture.