Few sculptures have loomed as giant in British tradition as Antony Gormley’s Angel of the North (1998). The metal sculpture of an angelic determine, positioned in Gateshead, England, stands 66 ft tall with a 177-foot wingspan. Seen from the A1 motorway, it’s seen by an estimated 33 million folks yearly. Now, it casts its shadow over the dystopian panorama of 28 Years Later, the third installment of director Danny Boyle’s zombie collection, which premiered on June twentieth.
Within the movie, Angel of the North is seen in a state of overgrowth and corrosion, evoking the desolation that follows a viral outbreak within the U.Okay. Its look reinforces the movie’s exploration of spiritual disillusionment and political unrest, aligning with a wider critique of conservative ideology in Britain. Throughout Boyle’s collection, he depicts a state of collapse that has more and more mirrored real-world anxieties about British isolationism—significantly within the wake of Brexit.
When first put in, Angel of the North was framed by Gormley as a tribute to coal miners who as soon as labored beneath its web site. “Males labored beneath the floor at the hours of darkness,” he stated. “Now, within the mild, there’s a celebration of this business.” But Gormley has additionally acknowledged the work as a response to Margaret Thatcher’s industrial insurance policies, which he felt signaled the tip of the nation’s manufacturing legacy. In a 2019 interview with The New York Occasions, he stated the sculpture challenged the concept that the Industrial Revolution’s influence was completed. Regardless of his intentions, the work confronted early backlash, with some native critics calling it an eyesore and others—citing the work’s winged type—making inflammatory comparisons to Nazi-era plane.
The Angel of the North is a part of Gormley’s bigger “Case for an Angel” collection, which incorporates a number of works exploring the strain between human vulnerability and industrial power. These sculptures sometimes characteristic elongated, winged human varieties that mirror Gormley’s curiosity within the physique as a web site of religious and emotional resonance.
Gormley is at present the topic of a solo present at Dallas’s Nasher Sculpture Middle, titled “Survey.” The present, on view by way of January 4, 2026, is the artist’s first main museum present in the USA.
