At Crosby beach, Merseyside the statue of a man looks out to sea. Then another and another – 100 cast iron figures endlessly interrogating the horizon. As the sea ebbs and flows it submerges and reveals them.
So, at the mouth of the sea, these strange installations stand, an army of them and yet each figure alone – as the years pass they are increasingly covered by barnacles from the sea and corrosion from the elements.
The work of the British artist Antony Gormley entitled ‘Another Place’, I first saw one of these ‘men’ in another place entirely, in London, perilously perched on a rooftop at the Southbank.
Then again, looking out from The Grapes Pub, I saw another – there he was – stood in the Thames at Limehouse…
I found this unexpected sight eerily moving. Despite being made of iron (a replication of the artist’s own body) they looked vulnerable – they looked lonely.
And so they remain, on their Liverpool beach, flocks of tourist’s photographing them, posing with them, even dressing them up, but never intruding on their essential solitude.
The following short clip is filmed on the beach at Margate where one of the sculptures found its home:
