Stargazing Sculpture

Standing in a field, near a public right of way to the south east of Ampleforth, North Yorkshire you can find a curious, spooky looking artwork that has no specific name, but is known by many as “Stargazer” or “Stargazing Sculpture”.

What is definitely known is the artist. Antony Gormley, of Angel of the North fame, who often creates sculptures in human form, was educated at the nearby Ampleforth College and this may well be the reason for the location of “Stargazer”.

The sculpture is around life size and is made from cast iron, giving it an intimate scale and strong link to the earth as it weathers and rusts over time. It depicts a person looking dramatically skywards rather than at the surrounding landscape. It is set within the Howardian Hills National Landscape, which is part of a Dark Sky area and is a great location to mirror the sculpture and stare upwards at the universe.

It continues Gormley's work that takes the human body and treats it not as an object to be admired but as a physical container in space, contrasting human scale with the huge distances of the universe. By placing these sculptures in the landscape, you are invited to pause and look around, in order to examine your presence in the environment and cosmos.

On our visit the local birds had clearly been resting and relieving themselves on it, giving it a terrifying appearance and perhaps another level of interpretation / interaction the artist hadn't intended!