Beyond appearances

‘Hello, anybody here?’ The gate into Antony Gormley’s studio had slid mysteriously open as I approached, but there was no one behind it — just a courtyard, a row of trees and two metal figures.

‘Hello, hello?’ I walked across the yard up to a vast warehouse, and peered in through the double doors. Still no living people — instead, what looked like a group of aliens hovering silently in mid-air: life-size figures made of looped orbits of wire suspended from the ceiling, others, radiating metal spikes, dangling below; a brace of life-casts hanging by the neck but looking, nonetheless, pretty calm.

In fact, the whole room was tremendously peaceful. So much so that, at a loss for what else to do, I hung out with the aliens, waiting, and wondering as I waited whether perhaps this meditative stillness was what Gormley’s work was all about.

Which — as I discovered after an hour’s tutorial with the sculptor in his studio — it’s not really.