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Curators | Iwona Blazwick, OBE, Director, Whitechapel Gallery & Elina Kountouri, Director, NEON
The mythical birthplace of Apollo and Artemis, Delos bears a historical weight disproportionate to its size. Inhabited since the Early Cycladic 3rd millennium BC, it is home to one of the most important sanctuaries of the Ancient Greek world, is fatally associated with classical Athens, and evolved into a wealthy commercial and urban centre of the Hellenistic oecumene, in the early Middle Ages, fading irreversibly, only to be rediscovered when European Modernity and the Greek state begun to shape their past, based on the findings of the large-scale 19th century excavations.
Director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades
More information about the Archaeological site of Delos Island here.
NEON was extremely proud to present this an unprecedented site-specific exhibition by British artist Antony Gormley, in collaboration with the Ephorate of Antiquities of Cyclades, in the Archaeological Site and Museum of Delos.
Gormley repopulated the island of Delos with iron ‘bodyforms’, restoring a human presence and creating a journey of potential encounters. He installed 29 sculptures made during the last twenty years, including 5 new works specially commissioned by NEON, both at the periphery and integrated amongst Delos’s archaeological sites. SIGHT was curated by Iwona Blazwick OBE, Director, Whitechapel Gallery and Elina Kountouri, Director, NEON.
The works animated the geological and archaeological features of the island: a granite rock in the middle of the Cycladic Islands in the Aegean less than 5 kilometres long and 1.5 kilometres wide, which has a past filled with myths, rituals, religions, politics, multiculturalism and trade. Its intertwined and contrasting identities, as both holy place and commercial town, combined with its topography and geographical location, made the island a singular and cosmopolitan Hellenistic town.
Gormley here completely reinterpreted the function and purpose of sculpture, transforming the traditional statues and totems of the ancient world that once adorned public squares, temples and private dwellings into sites of empathy and imaginative projection. His sculptures are integrated with archaeological sites across the island, from the Stadium to the Τheatre district and from the merchant stores to the Museum site.
More information about the exhibition SIGHT here.
Installation Views | Photographs © Oak Taylor Smith | Courtesy NEON
