MANCHESTER.- Manchester Art Gallery has acquired an important sculpture by Antony Gormley, one of the UK ’s leading contemporary artists, it was announced today (Tuesday 27 January 2009). Filter (2002) was bought with an £80,000 grant from leading independent art charity The Art Fund and valuable support from the Livingstone and Bloom Charitable Trusts.

This is the first time that the work will be shown in a public gallery in the UK , and means Manchester Art Gallery is just one of five regional galleries in the UK to have an Antony Gormley sculpture on permanent display.

Gormley (born 1950) is probably best known for his public sculpture The Angel of the North in Gateshead and his installation Another Place, at Crosby Beach , Merseyside. He visited Manchester Art Gallery today to officially mark the new addition to the Gallery’s collections.

Filter is a suspended, life-size male figure made of cut steel rings welded together. Holes in the rings allow people to view the interior which contains a ‘heart’ made of a mass of steel balls of the same diameter as the inside of the rings. As with much of Gormley’s work, the figure is based on the artist’s own body.

Antony Gormley said: “The work hangs in space as if in orbit, open to light and the elements, it is a meditation on the relationship between the core of the body and space at large. It suggests that while movement, freedom of choice and the exercising of will is one way in which life expresses itself there is another axis: the relationship between emotion and spatial experience.”

Two abseilers had to be brought into the Gallery to help with the specialist installation of the sculpture. It took over two hours to gradually lift the work into place, and secure it in position. Filter is now hanging in Manchester Art Gallery ’s magnificent glass extension, suspended by cable above the stairs leading to the Craft and Design and temporary exhibitions galleries.

Manchester City Council’s Executive Member for Culture and Leisure, Councillor Mike Amesbury, said: “This acquisition marks a renewed ambition by Manchester Art Gallery to develop the city’s public collection of contemporary artworks, contributing to the city’s reputation as a sustainable cultural destination. Manchester ’s aim is to leave an important and lasting legacy for future generations and to engage new and existing audiences with the art of our time. The purchase of Filter is a tremendous example of a partnership between The Art Fund and private individuals with a great passion for art, and pride in our city. We are extremely grateful to them all for their assistance.”

Over the last 25 years Antony Gormley has revitalised the human image in sculpture through a radical investigation of the body as a place of memory and transformation, using his own body as subject, tool and material.

Gormley’s work has been exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, with solo shows throughout the UK in venues such as the Whitechapel, Tate and the Hayward Galleries, the British Museum and White Cube. Blind Light, a major solo exhibition of his work, was held at the Hayward Gallery in 2007. He has also participated in major group shows such as the Venice Biennale.

Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994 and the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, Trinity College and Jesus Colleges , Cambridge elected a Royal Academician in 2003 and appointed a Trustee of the British Museum since 2007.