HIS SCULPTURES of bodies have hung from the walls of the Royal Academy courtyard in London and in the Tate Gallery in St Ives.

And yesterday the latest cast-iron figure by the Turner Prize- winning artist Antony Gormley was hung from a lightning-blasted tree in Yorkshire.

The artwork, a life-size figure taken from a cast of Gormley’s own body, was carefully manoeuvred into place in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park at West Bretton near Wakefield. It was lifted 30 feet into the air before being delicately lowered onto the top of a 20-foot oak tree, a spot chosen by the artist himself.  The tree was struck by lightening several years ago and the sculpture will have a lightning conductor fitted to safeguard it from any future unwanted strikes.

The work, entitled One and Other, weighs more than three-quarters of a ton and was cast last year. It is being lent by the artist and is the second piece by him in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. The other one, Rhizome III, is an iron cast of interlinking bodies.

Gormley is well known for using his own body as the basis for his art and for the colossal Angel of the North near Gateshead.