Antony Gormley’s Another Place, Crosby Beach, Sefton

No trip to Southport would be complete without a trip to Antony Gormley’s Another Place, an installation of 100 cast iron, life size figures on Crosby Beach, in Sefton.

Another Place, Mariners Road, Crosby Beach, Liverpool, Merseyside, L23 6SX

The haunting sculptures are spread out along three kilometres of the foreshore and stretching almost one kilometre out to sea.

Each Another Place figure weighs 650 kilos and are made from casts of the artist's own body.  They all look out to sea, staring at the horizon in “silent expectation”

“According to Antony Gormley, Another Place harnesses the ebb and flow of the tide to explore man's relationship with nature. The seaside is a good place to do this. Here time is tested by tide, architecture by the elements and the prevalence of sky seems to question the earth's substance. In this work human life is tested against planetary time. This sculpture exposes to light and time the nakedness of a particular and peculiar body. It is no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe, facing a horizon busy with ships moving materials and manufactured things around the planet.”

I have been several times now, and love it more each time I visit.

It would be so wonderful to live close enough to visit every day, to see how the beach and installation change with the seasons, light, weather and tide.  I have only ever seen it on a dull day …………..

…….. with the sea so far out its almost impossible to pick out against the skyline.

It’s without doubt, not the prettiest of beaches ………….. but what’s been created there is special and holds a very special place in my heart …….. perhaps even more so than the beautiful beaches of my beloved Greece, this place makes me feel peaceful and calm, and weirdly, very safe.