Gormley at White Cube

Doing my civic duty I picked up a newspaper from the pavement.  It was the  Evening Standard, full of interesting stuff including Antony Gormley's new show, Model, at White Cube.  My local White Cube in Bermondsey, which would fit in well with my plan to explore Bermondsey Street.

Carrying Southwark Council booklet The Story of Bermondsey, I walked down Jamaica Road, pioneering a new route to Bermondsey Street.  Down Tanner Street, in the bit the bus can't penetrate,  I found a massive warehouse full of antique furniture, very nice.  On to Tower Bridge Road and the squat little church of St. Mary Magdalen with its astonishingly low steeple, hardly a steeple at all.  But the church is the oldest building in Bermondsey, built in 1291 right next to Bermondsey Abbey.  The Abbey stood roughly between Grange Walk, where there are still remains of the Gatehouse, and Bermondsey Square where the Friday antiquyes market is held.  The small building by the church was the parish watch house, where any local malefactors were detained by the night watchmen.

 
 


Bermondsey Street runs across Tower Bridge Road here.  It is probably the oldest street in Bermondsey, narrow with warehouses on either side and cobbled alleys leading into old yards. It is the place I fell in love with on my very first visit to Bermondsey, walking across Tower Bridge to Zandra Rhodes Museum of Fashion and Textile.



The gleaming modernity of White Cube stands back behind a courtyard.  In the Model Room Antony Gormley was talking about his maquets, fascinating essays in translating the human form into cubes and playing around with extending them.  Perspex and wire models and drawings show the internal working structures.  In the white rooms the nearly black metal models are austere and beautiful; standing, lying, crouching.  Finally, stretching the length of one room, lies an interactive cubed form, an exploration of inner and outer space.  Enter the tunnel at the toe, adjusting to the dark, and feeling cautiously, a hand out and up to feel the wall and ceiling.  Explore the marks on the surface.  Crawl through the dark, dark tunnel towards faint light.  See the square of light ceiling where the roof opens up, fortuitously incorporating the square light fittings of the gallery.  Sitting on a shelf and looking around I saw shades of grey squares superimposed one on another, with one triangle of light.  Then there was a very, very dark space, pitch velvet black but with a faint reflective gleam from some far wall.  Walking slowly forward, hand outstretched and raised, I suddenly hit a barrier, the reflection was deceptive.  This is the head.  Then back to where I found a shelf and a space darker than the dark around and crawled to the back.  I observed invisibly and sat and listened to the boom, boom of people's feet on the metal, drummed with my hand and someone drummed back. 
I wondered when I saw the perspex maquets why Gormley made the final model opaque but now I understood.  Transparent would be another story.

whitecube.com/