Anthony Gormley at the Royal Academy

Finally got round to seeing the Anthony Gormley exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts - it's big and it's bold and it's great fun. Gormley is someone I've grown to appreciate slowly over the years and, for me at least, his most famous work is the Angel of the North that stands alone on a hillside in Gateshead that you can see from the train going up to Newcastle. The Angel is even better up close (get the number 21 bus from Newcastle).

The exhibition is spread out over the whole first floor exhibition space, room after room full of metalwork, drawings, sketchbooks, giant conkers hanging from the ceiling, tunnels and naked gentlemen dancing on the ceiling. You never know what you might see next.

It starts off gently enough with a sleeping man-shape in a lightly toasted bread duvet hanging on the wall. I've no idea what that is about but it made me smile. Next door is room full of thick strands of industrial sized bent metal wire, floor to ceiling and wall to wall, that you need to walk round the edges of the room, sometimes ducking to get under it and sometimes stepping over it and into the art itself to walk past. Weird and wonderful at the same time. It was fun hearing a 'clang' sound every now and then as someone mis-stepped and caught the thick metal wires as they stepped into it. I wonder how long it took to construct this work to fit the room?

Further along was a room full of sketches and drawings and cabinets full of Gormley's small sketchbooks. Most were A6 size or smaller, with drawings in pencil, pen and ink of all sorts of things, random ideas he was thinking about at the time. On the walls hung all sorts of works in various media including a couple drawn in his own blood. I dread to think what other body fluids might've been used in other drawings.

There's a room with two giant conkers suspended on sturdy ropes from the ceiling (or rather, something holding them beyond the ceiling) that were swaying slightly. They were metal and probably very heavy. This is part of the joy of the exhibition, not knowing what you might see next and then coming face to face with something you never expected or imagined. And then you find Gormley dancing on the ceiling.

This, I think, was my favourite room with a couple of dozen statues dotted about the place, standing on the floor, on the walls and on the ceiling - I've got no idea how they're suspected from the ceiling and I don't want to know since that'll spoil the magic. I think they're based on casts of Gormley himself and they're about six feet tall so they're pretty solid. What do you do with them? Why are they standing in those specific positions? Are we supposed to interact with them? Hold a conversation? Who knows? I wonder how many people accidentally bump into a statue not expecting it to keep standing there as the crowd moves and shuffles around?

It was very crowded when we visited and I suspect that room feels very different when it's empty, just you surrounded on all sides by these silent statues. Or maybe they're whispering amongst themselves?

The next big thing was an installation that filled another room and you walked through it in pitch blackness apart from a section in the middle with a few shards of light. It was a tunnel that most people had to lean over a bit to get in. I didn't go into that but walked round the outside. I'm a coward like that.

The following room was full of drawings and sketches and paintings and it was nice to see some of art that can hang on an ordinary wall - even my walls can take a nail and hang a painting but they wouldn't survive having one of his statues on them. I really liked some of the drawings and it would be interesting to see what sort of drawings or paintings he'd make if he spent a year doing nothing but paint. That would be an exhibition worth seeing.

All in all it's a great exhibition, lots of works to please everyone, lots of weirdness and lots to make you smile and think. I'm pleased I saw it.