Another Place
Another Place is one of the most quietly extraordinary public artworks in Britain, a permanent installation by the sculptor Antony Gormley situated on Crosby Beach, near Liverpool on the northwest coast of England. The work consists of one hundred cast-iron figures, each a life-size mould taken from the artist's own body, spread across two miles of foreshore and extending roughly one kilometre out to sea. Every figure stands facing the horizon, rooted in the sand and gradually consumed then revealed by the tides, giving the piece an almost hypnotic quality of collective yearning and solitude. It has become one of the most visited and beloved outdoor artworks in the United Kingdom, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors each year who come not only to view the figures but to walk among them, sit beside them, and be moved by the strange companionship they offer.
The work was created by Antony Gormley, already celebrated for the Angel of the North, and originally installed at Cuxhaven in Germany in 1997. It subsequently travelled to exhibitions in Belgium and Norway before Sefton Council, after significant public campaigning, secured it permanently for Crosby Beach in 2005. The campaign to keep it was itself remarkable, a grassroots effort by local people who had come to feel genuine affection for the figures during their temporary residency, and who argued successfully that the work had found its ideal home in this particular stretch of windswept Merseyside shoreline. Sefton Council received Planning Permission for the permanent installation in 2007, and the figures have remained there ever since, gradually acquiring barnacles, rust, seaweed, and the adornments that visitors attach to them — traffic cones, scarves, football shirts, flowers.
The physical experience of visiting Another Place is unlike almost any other encounter with public art. The beach itself is broad and flat, backed by sand dunes and, in one direction, by the red-brick Victorian suburb of Crosby. On a clear day the Welsh hills are visible across the Mersey estuary and out towards the Irish Sea. The figures nearest the shore stand in the sand looking entirely human at a distance, and the shock of encountering the first one — weathered, corroded, utterly still, gazing seaward — is genuinely startling. Further out, the figures become progressively submerged, some visible only as heads above the waterline at high tide, or as vague dark shapes beneath the surf. The soundscape is all wind and seabirds and the distant rumble of shipping on the estuary.
The figures themselves change constantly with the light and the season. On grey winter mornings they appear mournful and spectral, half-hidden in mist. In summer evening light they cast long shadows across the wet sand and seem almost warm with colour. Each one is subtly colonised by the sea; some are heavily encrusted with barnacles and limpets, and they have acquired a deep reddish-brown rust patina that reads as almost human. Local people have long given the figures informal names and personalities, and it is common to see visitors photographing a particular figure as if documenting a friend. The work raises genuinely profound questions about longing, presence, and what it means to face an open horizon.
Crosby Beach and the surrounding area sit within the larger coastal corridor of Sefton's coastline, which is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest in places and contains important dune systems and wader habitats. The nearby Seaforth Nature Reserve and Seaforth Dock attract birdwatchers, and the coast path here forms part of a longer walking route northward toward Formby, with its red squirrel population and extensive beach. The suburb of Waterloo is immediately adjacent to the south, and Crosby village itself offers cafes, pubs and restaurants within easy walking distance of the beach.
Getting to Another Place is straightforward. Blundellsands and Crosby railway station on the Merseyrail Northern Line connects the beach directly to Liverpool Central in around twenty minutes, and the walk from the station to the shore takes roughly ten to fifteen minutes. There is also a car park at the beach. The installation is open at all times and entry is entirely free. Visitors should be aware that the beach is tidal and conditions can change quickly; it is not advisable to wade out to reach submerged figures, and the sand can be soft and treacherous in places. Dogs are permitted on most parts of the beach. The best times to visit are around low tide, when the maximum number of figures is visible, and at golden hour, when the light on the iron skin of the statues is particularly beautiful.
One of the more fascinating hidden dimensions of the work is the sheer durability of the figures' relationship with the local community. They have been dressed, decorated, mourned, celebrated and occasionally vandalised, but the community always reclaims them. After Liverpool Football Club won major trophies, figures have appeared draped in scarves overnight. After the death of a local person, flowers have been left at the feet of a particular statue. Gormley himself has spoken about how the figures belong, once installed, not to him but to the sea and the people. That quality of shared ownership, of an artwork becoming genuinely woven into the emotional life of a community, is perhaps the most remarkable thing of all about Another Place.