Trash talk – the antagonising antics of Antony Gormley

Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories.

Antony Gormley has had quite the week of it: unveiling his plan to decorate the Brittany coast with Brexit ‘giants’ (which is, Rakewell is sure you will agree, exactly what the coast is crying out for), the announcement that he is applying for German citizenship, and now an announcement that is rather closer to home.

On 5 June, Twitter-user Hazel Southwell announced: ‘Anthony [sic] Gormley’s stolen my fucking bin again. this is the most ridiculous beef I have ever been involved with and I was briefly involved in a rights-related beef about a Wiley interview’.

Rakewell is working hard to verify this account – for we cannot help but feel that such trash talk is most unbecoming to an artist of such stature, who is renowned for creating so many thrilling and exciting versions of his own form. We all know that one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure, but this seems to be taking things to extremes. While Rakewell is no stranger to looking for jewels in surprising places, picking up a bin where an innocent neighbour wishes to ‘put cat poop’ feels like a step too far.

Gormley is no stranger to the theory of relativity: his series Quantum Void ‘is an attempt to evoke the energy-mass relationship identified in the general theory of relativity in material terms’. But getting to the truth of this matter, if such a thing exists, seems essential. Dear readers, can any of you corroborate the claim? In the meantime, Rakewell holds out hope that there will be no more rubbish of this sort concerning Gormley in the future.