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Sijaintisi: IHME History > IHME Project 2009 > Antony Gormley: Clay and the Collective Body

The venue. Photo: Kai Widell.

Antony Gormley: Clay and the Collective Body
IHME History

British sculptor Antony Gormley (b. 1950) was the artist to conceive the first IHME Project by the Pro Arte Foundation Finland. Gormley created a work in the Kaisaniemi sports field in Helsinki, bringing together clay and Helsinki locals in a specially erected pneumatic building.

Clay and the Collective Body featured a huge clay cube that was both a challenge and a shared bodily experience. Designed specifically for Helsinki and realised for the first time here, Gormley's work brought together Mass, Space and Energy in a response to the aims of the Pro Arte Foundation Finland: to ask questions about who make art, how art can be made and who it can be for.


The Clay and the Collective Body project started with a clay cube the size of a small house (4 x 4 x 4 m) and weighing 100,000 kilograms, housed in a well-lit, humidified pneumatic building. In the first phase of the project (from 22 to 24 March), the public was allowed to view the constructed cube. In the second phase (from 25 March to 3 April), the public had an opportunity to work on and with the clay and to use it to make objects of any kind, big or small, alone or with others.

The work took place in four-hour sessions, with a maximum of about 2,000 participants. Services were provided on site to ensure uninterrupted work on the project.

Here is the artist´s invitation:

"Antony Gormley invites you to participate in the making of a new artwork, Clay and the Collective Body. Come alone, with a friend or family member - anyone between the ages of 8 to 100 is welcome! You are asked to commit at least four continuous hours of your time to transforming a huge four-meter-tall cube of clay using your body as the only tool. The cube awaits you in a warm and humid space."

The public had the possibility to view the final result of the project from 4 to 7 April 2009.

YLE Teema was the partner of IHME Project. IHME Project was supported by Kone Foundation and British Council.

Reportage on the IHME Project 2009 on 5 and 7 April on television (YLE Teema)


YLE Teema showed the journalist Tina Cavén´s reportage Antony Gormley ja suomalaiset savessa (´Antony Gormley and Finns in clay´) on Sunday, 5 April at 8:10 p.m. and on Tuesday, 7 April at 11:20 p.m. This reportage by Tina Cavén follows what happens to the clay cube in a period of ten days. More important than the transformed clay cube in this piece of community art is, however, what the project reveals about us Finns: how we act in interactive situations, how we approach communication and teamwork, and how we influence one other. Man as a collective being plays the lead role in this reportage.