Photo: The wub · CC BY-SA 4.0
Artwork Record
Quantum Cloud
About this work
Gormley’s tallest sculpture, taller than the Angel of the North. It stands on a disused pier in the Thames beside The O2 and was commissioned for the North Meadow Sculpture Project to mark the millennium. A central group of about 325 tetrahedral sections forms the figure, and more than 3,500 more extend outward into the cloud. The steel was arranged by a computer random-walk model seeded from an enlarged figure based on Gormley’s body. Structural design was by Elliott Wood Partnership, the foundations by Beckett Rankine, and fabrication by Tubeworkers (Structures) Ltd.
Technique
Each work is built from short straight steel sections joined into tetrahedral units. A computer random-walk algorithm places the units, starting from points on the surface of an enlarged scan of Gormley’s own body. The figure remains as a dense "residual outline" at the centre. The concept comes from quantum physicist Basil Hiley’s ideas of pre-space as a structure beneath space-time and matter.
Technique drawn from the Quantum Cloud collection.
More views
- Collection
- Quantum Cloud
- Year
- 1999
- Medium
- Galvanised steel sections (tetrahedral units)
- Dimensions
- 30 × 16 m
- Location
- North Greenwich Pier, Greenwich Peninsula, London
- Held by
- Greenwich Peninsula (site-specific commission)
- Status
- Permanent public work
References10
Primary links for Antony Gormley and this work.
