Antony Gormley chose to become a sculptor not despite its difficulty but because of it. He welcomed its challenges. “You’re not just creating a picture of something that already exists,” he told Galerie magazine in 2025. “You’re directly engaging with the world and transforming it.” Born in London, Gormley was heavily influenced by the artist Joseph Beuys and spent time in India meditating before he began to study art. Gormley often used his own body as a reference and molded parts of himself in plaster to investigate the human body as it related to space. His permanent work has established him as one of the U.K.’s most important working artists. Gormley’s monumental steel sculpture, Angel of the North (1998), located on the country’s longest numbered road, is seen by an estimated 33 million people every year. This new exhibition explores “urban animals”—humans!—through their use of stone, clay, iron, and cardboard. Twenty-five works invite visitors to investigate modes of access to open and closed spaces throughout the gallery. —Maggie Turner