Antony Gormley, Royal Academy London

What is a body? The acclaimed British sculptor Antony Gormley has pursued this question throughout his long career, and now readdresses it in his most significant solo show for over a decade. Within the spacious galleries of the Royal Academy, Gormley stages a dialogue between some well-known works, brand new pieces and the architecture of the Royal Academy itself, shedding new light on the ways in which his oeuvre has developed over the years.

Best known for his Angel of the North sculpture, Gormley juxtaposes natural materials such as seawater with modern, industrial materials, including cast iron. The sculptor is known for modelling many of his sculptures on his own body and interacting with the spaces in which his exhibitions take place. SUBJECT, his recent show at Cambridge’s Kettle’s Yard, featured custom-made steel threads that spanned the gallery’s walls, leading viewers from one sculpture to the next. Gormley’s forthcoming show will similarly include pieces specially crafted to actively engage with the hallowed halls of the Royal Academy.

His sculptures aim to actively engage viewers, too. ‘When so many of us are immersed in a world of meetings, deadlines, duty and work,' Gormely writes, 'sculpture – by being a rock in the stream of our lives – invites us to stop, reconsider, to re-assess being rather than doing.’ Indeed, Gormley's sculptural practice springs from an interrogation of the self, and the relationship of object and body to space and place. This major Royal Academy Antony Gormley exhibition foregrounds these concerns, blurring the lines between boundaries, whether physical, liminal or metaphorical.