AGWA’s acquisitions Big Pluck 2 2016, and Big Yield 2015, are outstanding examples of Gormley’s recent practice.

Composed from scans of his body scaled up one-and-a-half times, the works are part of his wider Big Beamers series. According to Gormley’s website, the series uses “the construction principles of architecture to reconsider the body in space and as space”. The arrangement of steel beams fills out the internal form of Gormley’s body, while intentional voids allow space to permeate it. Like buildings, each figure has its own particular physical expression. Big Pluck 2 – which extends upward as if pulled up by an unseen force – is intended to be heroic; in contrast, the curled over form of Big Yield appears mournful or struggling in nature. The geometric forms invite viewers to move around them, to experience them fully in relation to the space in which they are situated.

It was Gormley’s intention to signal in the works from this series that everybody can be a sculpture; that we become sculptures as we move our masses around, as our limbs and torsos form different patterns, different spaces, different places in the world. By placing the works at the entrance to the Gallery, we signify that art is not only for everybody, but is made by everybody as well.

Big Pluck 2 2016, and Big Yield 2015, were purchased through the Art Gallery of Western Australia Foundation with funds donated by John Rodgers, in recognition of the contribution by his father Kurt Rodgers to the arts and to the Gallery where he was a Board Member from 1960 to 1970.