looking in the mirror

I made my third visit yesterday to see Anthony Gormley's Field for the British Isles which has been in Torquay for 6 weeks - today was the final day and I wanted to see it one last time before it left. Each visit has been a different experience. I got there early - I wanted to experience it in quiet, to contemplate it in silence.

I have been incredibly moved by it - so many layers and levels of meaning - from what is basically a lot of lumps of clay!

Gormley talks about the piece's subject - the experience of looking. His hope is that "the old formula of a 'subject who looks' at an object which 'is looked at' can be transmuted into us looking at ourselves".

I reflected on this - what do I see in and about myself by looking at 40,000 clay 'gazers'? The viewer is made the subject - I am being looked at. I feel unnerved- there seems an expectation of me. I look at individual figures and some make me laugh. I remind myself they are simply pieces of clay yet they are full of individual character. And I think about how the 'character' comes from the person who created each figure - they may have been 7 years old, they may have been 70 years old, each with their own history. The gazers link their makers with me, a viewer. The figures fill the entire space - the imaginative space is in the 'witness'. And I realise I have made a connection with these little characters - and feel sorry that they are going!

We often use the term 'looking at' in mentoring, Action Learning, and training. We take time out to 'look at' what is going on. We can discover that some of the things we see in others are parts of ourselves (there is model used in training to understand this concept called the Johari Window). We can become aware that what we see may be something different from what it is, and so what we 'see' is our assumption. We see different options for ourselves based on new knowledge. We can look in the 'mirror' and see ourselves .

Field of the British Isles : Anthony Gormley