Another Place - Iron Men

After yesterday's party, some time in Crosby Liverpool where I grew up and went to school.

We took a walk along the beach to look again at what must by now be one of the most viewed and photographed public art installations Another Place by sculptor and artist Antony Gormley, now locally known as the iron men

The Another Place figures - each weighing 650 kilos - are made from casts of the artist's own body and are shown at different stages of rising out of the sand, all of them looking out to sea, staring at the horizon in ‘silent expectation.’

Antony Gormley says the installation is a poetic response to the individual and universal sentiments associated with emigration - sadness at leaving, but the hope of a new future in Another Place.

It always makes me think of the many hundreds, millions of people all around the world standing on the shore line , watching in sadness as loved ones leave, or waiting in desperate hope for loved ones to return, in many cases for those persons never to be seen or heard of again.

Why you see the figures at first small and distant on the shore, it is difficult to distinguish between the iron men and the real people walking on the sand.

It also makes me think of my father who lived in the area and walked every day on this beach for many years