What people are saying about ‘The Angel of the North’



“People are always asking why an angel? The only response I can give is that no-one has ever seen one and we need to keep imagining them. The angel has three functions - firstly a historic one to remind us that below this site coal miners worked in the dark for two hundred years, secondly to grasp hold of the future expressing our transition from the industrial to the information age, and lastly to be a focus for our hopes and fears.” - Antony Gormley, sculptor

“Antony’s huge talent has produced a piece of public art unique in the history of this country, and in time I think it may only compare with the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty. I think it is one of the masterpieces of 20^th century sculpture.”- Lord Gowrie, chairman of the Arts Council, on Sunday 15 February 1998, the day the Sculpture was erected on site.

“I think it is probably the emptiest, most inflated, most vulgar of his (Antony Gormley’s) works… Gateshead is a self-inflicted wound. Bomb it, then you will change it. It is an awful place… most of the North is awful…” - Brian Sewell, Art Critic for the London Evening Standard

“I think the greatest thing for the ‘Angel’ is that Brian Sewell has classed it as rubbish, which must mean it’s good…” - Eamonn McCabe, Picture Editor, The Guardian

“The statue’s a monumental clanger” - The Sun

“Magnificent…it will be the symbol of Gateshead …a fantastic, magical, mystical thing, it can say all kinds of things to all kinds of people.” - Janet Street-Porter, journalist and broadcaster

“It is big, bold and beautiful. My guts were gouged about and stirred with inspiration” - Lucinda Lambton

“Gormley’s figure is said to represent an angel, but it more closely represents an old clothes peg and a foot rule…” - Mail on Sunday

“Maybe the Angel of the North will embrace travellers with those wings and tell them that, wherever they live, here is homecoming” - Beatrix Campbell, The Guardian

“Flash Gordon with wings and the feet of the Beast from the Black Lagoon” - M. Fiddes, of Scotswood, in the Evening Chronicle

“It is a witness to life at the end of the 20^th century. The car is a human body isolated in a bubble, not communicating with anyone else. The Angel is trying to ask ‘is that all we can be?’” - Lord Gowrie

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