ST. HELENS.- Field for the British Islesis one of Antony Gormley's most famous and best-loved artworks, comprising a mini terracotta army of 40,000 figurines for which he won the prestigious Turner Prize in 1994. This sensational exhibition marks Field'sfirst homecoming to St.Helens where it was created by local volunteers 15 years ago, and is the centerpiece of the Borough's summer events programme and contribution to Liverpool's European Capital of Culture celebrations.The exhibition also complements Gormley's "Another Place" - the 100 lifesize "iron men" permanently installed on Crosby beach near Southport.

"Field" has been installed and displayed at various locations. The specific configuration is changed to suit each location, but the miniature figures are always placed to form a dense carpet with each figure looking towards the viewer. Ideally the Field is extended through a doorway or round a corner, so that the figures going out of sight leave the impression of an unlimited horde. Gormley has also made several other works entitled "Field", each on a different continent.

Gormley describes his work as "an attempt to materialise the place at the other side of appearance where we all live." Many of his works are based on moulds taken from his own body, or "the closest experience of matter that I will ever have and the only part of the material world that I live inside." His work attempts to treat the body not as a thing but a place and in making works that enclose the space of a particular body to identify a condition common to all human beings. The work is not symbolic but indexical - a trace of a real event of a real body in time.

Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950. Upon completing a degree in archaeology, anthropology and the history of art at Trinity College, Cambridge, he travelled to India, returning to London three years later to study at the Central School of Art, Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Art.

Over the last 25 years Antony Gormley has revitalised the human image in sculpture through a radical investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation, using his own body as subject, tool and material. Since 1990 he has expanded his concern with the human condition to explore the collective body and the relationship between self and other in large-scale installations like Allotment, Critical Mass, Another Place, Domain Field, and Inside Australia. His recent work increasingly engages with energy systems, fields and vectors, rather than mass and defined volume, evident in works like Clearing, Blind Light, Firmament and Another Singularity.

Antony Gormley’s work has been exhibited extensively, with solo shows throughout the UK in venues such as the Whitechapel, Tate and the Hayward Galleries, the British Museum and White Cube, and internationally at museums including the Louisiana Museum in Humlebaek, the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington DC, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, and the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Germany. Blind Light, a major solo exhibition of his work, was held at the Hayward Gallery in 2007.

He has participated in major group shows such as the Venice Biennale and the Kassel Documenta 8. His Field has toured America, Europe and Asia. Angel of the North and, more recently, Quantum Cloud on the Thames in Greenwich are amongst the most celebrated examples of contemporary British sculpture. One of his key installations, Another Place, is to remain permanently on display at Crosby Beach, Merseyside.

He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994 and the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999 and was made an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1997. In 2007 he was awarded the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Trinity College, Cambridge and Jesus College, Cambridge, and has been a Royal Academician since 2003.