Antony Gormley’s LAND statue has been placed at Clavell Tower to mark The Landmark Trust’s 50th anniversary celebrations this weekend. 

The life-sized cast iron statue is one of five positioned at each point of the compass in the UK.

 


Clavell Tower will be open on May 16 and 17 between 10am and 4pm as p[art of the Trust's annual Golden Weekend, which sees buildings usually closed to the public opened for a short time.

Here's our guide to the Golden Weekend event at Clavell Tower, the LAND statues and Antony Gormley himself.

1. This weekend, 25 Landmark Trusts buildings will be open across the country, many of which have never been open before or are only rarely open to the public.

2. The buildings have been carefully picked so that 95% of the British population will be within 50 miles of an open Landmark.

3. At 3pm on 16 May, local groups, community choirs, bands, bell ringers and musicians will simultaneously perform a specially commissioned Anthem for Landmark written by acclaimed young composer Kerry Andrew.

4. The statues are 2m high and will be free for everyone to enjoy until May 2016.

5. The four other LAND statues will be placed on Lundy Island in the Bristol Channel, the roof of a Martello tower in Suffolk, Saddell Bay, Mull of Kintyre and Lengthsman’s Cottage, Warwickshire.

6. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Gormely said: "In many senses, I want these sculptures to be markers, 21st-century standing stones.

"Rather than being representative or narrative, I just want them to be catalysts for retrospection."

7. Antony Gormley chose the sites himself and the statues will be the only pieces of his work to be showcased in the UK this year.

8. His sites represent four compass points at the Mull of Kintyre in Scotland, Wales and England, with a central point by the canal at Lowsonford in Warwickshire where the trust owns the old lock keeper’s cottage.

9. Each of the five works made for this commission tries to identify a human space in space at large.

10. His most famous work is the Angel of the North which was completed in 1998. The steel sculpture is 20 metres (66 ft) tall, with wings measuring 54 metres (177 ft) across.

11. Clavell Tower, which fell into disrepair after the First World War, was moved 85ft to safety, brick-by-brick, from the eroding cliff top at Kimmeridge, as part of a two-year restoration project ending in 2008.