Antony Gormley (b. 1950)

‘A MEME is a cultural analogue to a gene: forms that are transmitted in thought or behaviour from one body to another, responding to conditional environments, self-replicating and capable of mutation.

Using the miniature or model to allow the totality of a body to be seen at once, the MEMES replace anatomy with the formal language of architecture and construct volumes that articulate a range of 33 body postures.

These small solid iron works use a geometric formal language of 27 blocks to articulate a range of 33 body postures. The ambition is to make intelligible forms that form an abstract lexicon of body-posture but which nevertheless carry the invitation of empathy and the transmission of states of mind’

(A. Gormley)