LONDON.- In this beautifully illustrated cloth-bound book, Antony Gormley presents his work and artistic influences in his own words, giving a rich insight into his medium and creative process. This is first in a new series published by Thames & Hudson in which the world’s most powerful creative practitioners reflect on the ideas, processes and histories behind their craft.

Antony Gormley occupies an unusual position as a highly visible sculptor – creator of the Angel of the North – who is also widely regarded as one of the most intellectually engaged artists working internationally. He is grounded in archaeology and anthropology, and looks to Asian and Buddhist traditions as much as to Western sculptural history.

The book is structured thematically over four chapters: the first, explores Gormley’s thoughts on the body, time and space in relation to major installations including European Field (1993) and Still Standing (20111), Gormley’s rehang of the classical rooms at the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. The second chapter, ‘Sculptors’, was first delivered as a series of radio broadcasts for the BBC; in each, Gormley discusses a sculpture he considers to be of huge creative importance: Epstein’s Rock Drill (1913–15), Brancusi’s Endless Column (1935–38), Giacometti’s La Place (1948–49), Joseph Beuys’s Plight (1985) and Richard Serra’s The Matter of Time (2005). In the third chapter, Gormley outlines the influence of Buddhist and Jain sculpture on his work and ideas, and the fourth explores the artist’s most recent sculptures.

Like Gormley’s sculpture, this is a book that is deeply serious but also highly accessible, beautiful and universally resonant.

Antony Gormley is a sculptor and installation artist whose work has been exhibited at major museums in Brazil, Russia, Sweden, Australia, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the UK and the Netherlands. Born in London in 1950, Gormley studied art history, anthropology and archaeology at Trinity College, Cambridge, followed by three years spent travelling in Sri Lanka and India to learn about Buddhism and Asian culture. He returned to London to study at Central School of Art, Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Art, London. Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999, the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007, the Obayashi Prize in 2012 and the Praemium Imperiale in 2013, and has been a Royal Academician since 2003.

Mark Holborn is a writer and editor who has worked on books with many artists and photographers from Lucian Freud to William Eggleston.