Culture

Yesterday I went to the Gormley exhibition at SouthBank Art Centre. The artist is a London-born sculptor, who has specialised in self-portrait through sculpture, as well as the exploration of the human condition in general. The two best parts of the exhibit were the "Light Box" and I can't remember the official name of the other part, but it was a series of probably 20-some cast iron replicas of the artist on top of lots of different buildings in the SouthBank area, on both sides of the river. All the statues sort of looked down and toward the gallery, and it was an eerie sort of feeling of being watched...sort of Matrix-esque. Or even better, City of Angels, where you saw all the angels watching everyone from rooftops. We wondered whether the Metropolitan police got a number of phone calls about jumpers the first couple of days that the statues went up...

The Light Box was a glass enclosure filled with vapor and bright light...sort of like a steam room without the heat. You could only see about a foot in front of your face once you stepped inside, so it was very disorienting. You took sort of small, halting steps to avoid crashing into someone else or the glass walls. We did actually see a lady's head bounce off of one of the glass walls from the outside-- ouch! It was interesting from that perspective as well, to see people materialize out of nowhere, right next to the glass. It made me think about patients I've had who are registered blind and can only see light and dark.