Although the original form is therefore still that of the artist's own silhouette, his is not a strictly autobiographical work, but rather a "vehicle" for interrogating himself on the great existential questions: "sculpture, for me, uses physical means to talk about the spirit, weight to talk about its absence, light to talk about darkness, a visual medium to refer to things that cannot be seen." (Gormley).
Antony Gormley has created sculptures for major museums throughout the world, large-scale installations in Great Britain and abroad, as well as a few of the most significant public works in recent decades (including Field for the British Isles, Angel of the North).
Also notable is the artist's participation in the Venice Biennial and Documenta 8, personal exhibitions in the major English galleries (including Whitechapel Gallery, Serpentine and White Cube) and the conferral of awards including the prestigious Turner Prize in 1994.

INTERVIEW:

ARABELLA NATALINI:
I would just start with few very basic questions. The first one could be you always use the body as a starting point, and materiality seems to be an element of a great relevance. So how do you use these elements in your work?

ANTONY GORMLEY:
I want to make work that communicates something about being alive and it seems to make most sense to use my own existence and my own physical reality as the subject, the tool, and the material. It's a primary material.
I'm very interested in making work that in some way asks questions, and perhaps never gives a complete answer, but simply by introducing a foreign body into the body of architecture in some way asks the viewer on what is she or he in that space.
Anyway to be given a space like this is a miracle, it's a wonderful thing because increasingly I'm interested in using architectural spaces as a kind of sounding board to make in a way the somatic experience of the viewer more real or amplified. And some how this tower, this 30 meter high tower, with a very pure relationship between its volume and its acoustic and its like is anyway a wonderful context to work with.
This piece is called 'edge' and I suppose it's a re-location of the body. It's not here in the same terms we are here. This is a solid iron mass, but I don't care about its appearance so much, it's an evocation of whatever that space is when you close your eyes. Where are you when you close you r eyes? You're in a space, you're the darkness of the body.
It's very personal, but I don't see my work necessarily as being a self - portrait. It's simply a particular example of the human condition, and I want to use it in some way a space that can be occupied emphatically. So anybody coming in to this space in some way can look up and project themselves in imaginatively into that position.

AN. I wanted to ask you to give us a brief account of your working method, how you realise, produce the sculpture.

AG. Well, it's very important to me that the sculpture starts from a point of reality. That means a lived moment, in real time, in real space. For this work I tried to imagine what it would be feel like to be in a kind of weightless position, I mean a weightless space, and to have all of the tension of the body inside.
And that is how I work, I stand very still, and for about 20 minutes it's a matter of will. I'm wrapped in cellophane plastic, and for 20 min I have to concentrate very hard, but then it's interesting because this moment of will then changes, in fact in the complete opposite. You became, in a way, the prisoner of a previews moment. And that quite interest me, so it's like a descent into the condition of the inanimate, into the condition of the mineral, into the condition if you like of death.
For me sculpture has to be still, has to be silent, but has to use silence and stillness in some very positive way. In this very mobile world in where everything is visual, I want sculpture to be like an industrial fossil, that carries within it something about the memory of human experience.

AN. Going back to the working process…

AG. Oh yes, sorry, I should speak practically.
So, I'm covered in clean film first, then two assistants cover me completely from head to toe in jute cloth, completely impregnated with plaster, and that's laid on and it takes between 20 min and half an hour, to put all that on and for the plaster then to begin catalysing, and then a further half an hour to remove the mould. For many years I used the mould for the basis of my work. But now I have made that void solid, massive. Once that mould has been taken, I make a fiberglass positive which is then used as a model and we enclose it again in sand, and then fill that void, that space inside, with iron.
I hope that this work carries all the story of its making, you can see the clean film, you can see where the original mould was cut you can see where the sand mould was placed together, you can also see there points, which is where the iron is poured in. And I didn't want to hide anything, so the surface of the sculpture birth talks about the moment of its origin but also the process, the industrial process of it making

AN. I don't know if you want to say just few more words about this particular project; when you came to San Casciano for the first time, discussing about the project we saw also other sites and at the end we discovered this one, and I think this is a great occasion because the space is fantastic, and also we have the chance to perhaps save this architecture that might otherwise have been destroyed..

AG. What's fantastic about this space, and what's fantastic about a lot, particularly in Italy industrial architectures is that they carry an intelligent understanding about material used absolutely minimally for the maximum effect.
Anyway the minute that I saw this building, I was aware that it was unique, it was very precious. This is post war architecture of the most functional, utilitarian, but it also has an extreme elegance, I believe, and has just as much rights to be preserved as Trajan's column.
It has a very important story to tell about a particular time in European history. Anyway I'm feeling very blessed to have being given the opportunity of making something that is trying to catalyse this space so that it can become an imaginative space.