ROOM Book by Antony Gormley Signed Limited Edition of 1,600 (number 0029). SIGNED Limited Edition of 1,600 (This is number 0029) finished with gilt page edges and numbered at the back. Presented to the first guests staying at ROOM by Antony Gormley at the Beaumont hotel, Mayfair. Title: Antony Gormley Room (Hardcover). Publisher: Tate Publishing, London. Beautiful large duotone photographs of the interior and exterior of Antony Gormley s ROOM, a giant crouching figure on the façade of London s new Beaumont Hotel, are published alongside a selection of 25 of the artist s dark drawings (1980s to date) and an indepth essay by Professor Margaret Iversen that considers ROOM in relation to Buddhist meditation, liminal states, caves and Brutalist architecture. Describing ROOM, Gormley states, I take the body as our primary habitat. ROOM contrasts a visible exterior of a body formed from large rectangular masses with an inner experience. The interior of ROOM is only 4 metres square but 10 metres high: close at body level, but lofty and open above. Shutters over the window provide total blackout and very subliminal levels of light allow me to sculpt darkness itself. My ambition for this work is that it should confront the monumental with the most personal, intimate experience. Margaret Iversen is Professor in the School of Philosophy and Art History at the University of Essex. Her books include Alois Riegl: Art History and Theory (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993), Beyond Pleasure: Freud, Lacan and Barthes (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2007), Writing Art History (with Stephen Melville, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2010) and Chance (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2010). She recently co-edited with Diarmuid Costello special issues of journals: Photography after Conceptual Art for Art History and Agency and Automatism for Critical Inquiry. A book called Photography, Trace and Trauma is forthcoming.
