40,000 Terracotta Army
“It had been a long and hard week’s work to get 40,000 terracotta figurines individually placed in a carefully plotted pattern. So as the last pieces were placed in the ‘Field for the British Isles’, by Turner Prize-winning artist Antony Gormley, everyone held their breath to ensure no slapstick calamities befell the artwork. Luckily the task was handled with care, and the nightmare of a disastrous round of dominoes thankfully never came to pass. The famous collection is made up of thousands of individual terracotta figures each between 8cm and 26cm high. It has now moved to its new home, the Torre Abbey’s Spanish Barn in Torquay, Devon, for an exhibition over the summer. The work of art was put together using laser markers by a dedicated team of volunteers under the watchful eye of a team from the Arts Council and a careful list of instructions from Gormley.” w/ photos
