Although we work in Liverpool many times each week, we have never visited the Iron Men at Crosby. Known more formally as Another Place, the Iron Men are an art installation on the coast. 100 spectacular cast-iron, life-size figures by Anthony Gormley spread across three kilometres of the foreshore and stretch almost one kilometre out to sea. All of the figures are looking out to sea, staring at the horizon in silent expectation.
Another Place is beautiful and peaceful and slightly eerie. All those figures staring at the horizon and never moving. Anthony Gormley explains his ideas and motivation behind the figures: "The seaside is a good place to do this. Here time is tested by tide, architecture by the elements and the prevalence of sky seems to question the earth's substance. In this work human life is tested against planetary time. This sculpture exposes to light and time the nakedness of a particular and peculiar body. It is no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe, facing a horizon busy with ships moving materials and manufactured things around the planet."