You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service.

This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program.

I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker.

My guest today is one of the world's best-known sculptors,

whose lifetime of work has just been celebrated

at a major exhibition at the Royal Academy in London.

Sir Anthony Gormley is perhaps defined by his fascination with the human body.

His art focuses not on efforts to represent the human form.

He doesn't do statues, he says.

Instead, he is preoccupied with the space that the body fills,

how it relates to the world around it.

His best known works are examples of public art,

the towering angel of the north,

which overlooks the northeast of England, and a group of men standing looking out to sea on the tidal sands near Liverpool.

He's achieved wealth, honours and recognition beyond the dreams of most artists.

So does his urge to make sense of the world and his place in it burn as bright as ever?

Anthony Gormley, thank you so much for inviting us into your studio. I say studio, but it actually

feels like a workshop, doesn't it? I think it's a factory. It's a place where we make things.

And, you know, things are being made and tested the whole time.

Very nice to have you here.

...