NEW YORK, NY.- Sean Kelly congratulates Antony Gormley on being awarded a Knighthood in the New Year Honours List, which recognizes the achievements and service of extraordinary people in the United Kingdom. Sir Antony Gormley won the Turner Prize in 1994, was appointed an OBE in 1997, and won the prestigious Praemium Imperiale Prize for Sculpture in 2013. He commented on accepting the knighthood: "I receive this honour in the name of sculpture as the art of collective imagination...historically these awards recognised people that served the country militarily, politically or industrially but now they are awarded to people that have opened people’s minds...this reflects a happy shift in what Britain holds dear."

Sir Antony Gormley is widely acclaimed for his sculptures, installations and public artworks that investigate the relationship of the human body to space. His work has developed the potential opened up by sculpture since the 1960s through a critical engagement with both his own body and those of others in a way that confronts fundamental questions of where human being stands in relation to nature and the cosmos. Gormley continually tries to identify the space of art as a place of becoming in which new behaviors, thoughts and feelings can arise.

Gormley’s work has been widely exhibited throughout the UK and internationally with exhibitions at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, São Paulo, Rio di Janeiro and Brasilia in Brazil (2012); Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany (2012); The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, Russia (2011); Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria (2010); Hayward Gallery, London, England (2007); Malmö Konsthall, Sweden (1993) and Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, Denmark (1989). He has also participated in major group shows such as the Venice Biennale (1982 and 1986) and Documenta 8 (1987). Permanent public works include the Angel of the North (Gateshead, England), Another Place (Crosby Beach, England), Inside Australia (Lake Ballard, Western Australia) and Exposure (Lelystad, The Netherlands).

Gormley was awarded the Turner Prize in 1994, the South Bank Prize for Visual Art in 1999 and the Bernhard Heiliger Award for Sculpture in 2007. In 1997 he was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE). He is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, an Honorary Doctor of the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity and Jesus Colleges, Cambridge. Gormley has been a Royal Academician since 2003 and a British Museum Trustee since 2007. In 2014, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the New Year Honours List.

Sir Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950.