Sculptor Antony Gormley has released the first images of his proposal for a public artwork in Dublin's docklands. He plans to create a 48-metre high metal figure on the river Liffey.
Commissioned by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority, the figure will be constructed from an open latticework of steel, coated with bitumen.
As with the majority of his work, it is based on casts taken of his own body. Pending planning permission, it will be sited on the seaward side of the Seán O'Casey Bridge, rising directly and dramatically out of the water where, says the DDDA, it will be "a signpost for the realignment of Dublin's epicentre eastwards".
Gormley, one of the leading artists of his generation, is best known for his Angel of the North in Gateshead, which was completed in 1998. This monumental metal figure, with its arms extended, initially aroused some adverse comment but has become one of the best known artistic landmarks in Europe.
Since then he has completed many large- scale projects worldwide. His recent Hayward Gallery exhibition in London, which included a number of sculptural figures sited in various architectural settings in the city, attracted a huge level of interest. He was invited to proceed with the docklands commission after an international competition and a year-long selection process.
He hasn't set out to make a docklands angel and he is wary about using the word monument in relation to his monumentally scaled work. It is vital, he says, that the Docklands structure is an open one, so that "the human body is seen in relation to the social body, as a matrix of connectivity in collective space".
Rather than being a massive, monumental figure, it is, he says: "like a charcoal drawing against the sky, changing as your position changes in relation to it. Up close you will see through it, in the distance it will cohere into a bodily image."
The latticework construction poses engineering challenges, hence the involvement of Ove Arup's advanced geometry unit.
"It's a collaborative process," Gormley says. "I'm trying to make something that is unequivocally of its time. That is, in terms of tools, and techniques and even in the idea of a virtual being, we're pushing at the limits of what's possible."
Strictly speaking, he points out, none of it would be possible at all without the work of Trinity College physicists Prof Denis Weaire and Prof Robert Phelan, whose solution on the problem of devising the most economic way to divide spatial volumes produced the Weaire-Phelan structure in 1993. Their complex "bubble matrix" is currently being used in the building of the aquatic centre for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Even when the theoretical challenges are overcome, however, there remains the practical one of building the sculpture. "I think it's immensely important that it is built here in Ireland, by an Irish contractor," Gormley says.
He and Ove Arup are currently looking for one. "It's difficult to find someone who possesses the necessary skills and can deliver competitively on such a project, but I think we're making progress."
The budget is currently an estimated €1.6 million and, if planning permission is granted, construction is likely to start some time next year.
