Theme 343 - Angel

Angel of the North - Antony Gormley

I cannot possibly do justice to this awe inspiring sculpture by Antony Gormley. I had not been to see this before but made the trip to get the "Angel" theme - for this alone, I am glad I am attempting this 366 Challenge. You can see The Angel as you approach on the A1 from Newcastle/Gateshead - but when we arrived I was overwhelmed - it is magnificent! To quote from Antony Gormley's website

"Is it possible to make a work with purpose in a time that demands doubt? I wanted to make an object that would be a focus of hope at a painful time of transition for the people of the north-east, abandoned in the gap between the industrial and the information ages.

The work is made of corten steel, weighs 200 tonnes and has 500 tonnes of concrete foundations. The mound near the A1 motorway which was the designated site of the sculpture was made after the closure of the Lower Tyne Colliery, out of the destroyed remains of the pithead baths. It is a tumulus marking the end of the era of coal mining in Britain.

The Angel resists our post-industrial amnesia and bears witness to the hundreds and thousands of colliery workers who had spent the last three hundred years mining coal beneath the surface".


To give an idea of the size, the wing span is approximately the size of a Boeing 747.