St Mary’s in Shrewsbury had never seen such a congregation: 40,000 hand-made clay figures packed into the nave of this Shropshire church for five weeks this year. And in that time just as many humans came to see them. They stood and stared and the little clay people stood and stared back. It was a stand-off. After a while, one by one, the humans gave up looking and went away. This hollow-eyed terracotta crowd has been staring people out at venues from Llandudno to Dublin, from Liverpool to London ever since they were made by 100 pupils, parents and volunteers from Sutton community high school in St Helens, Merseyside, in 1993.

“Field for the British Isles”, the idea of Turner Prize-winning sculptor Antony Gormley, takes 10 days to assemble as each figure, between eight and 26 centimetres high, is placed in a prearranged group according to size and colour. From a distance, the undulating surface and colouring of these roughly thumbed clay bodies give the earthy appearance suggested in its title.

Perhaps the artist has packed them so densely to suggest the oneness of humanity? But look closer and each figure, fashioned from the earth with the untrained hands of ordinary people, is as unique as its maker. From the level gaze of the massed ranks at the rear, to the skyward-glancing figures at the front that Gormley calls stargazers, each one is looking at you. Their eyes, the only discernible feature on these rudimentary faces, receive the spectator’s gaze, and return it several thousand times over.

Gormley casts human figures, often his own, in various materials and puts them in unusual places. He is best known for “The Angel of the North”, the aeroplane-winged colossus that overlooks the A1 near Newcastle. But his series of Field installations has created a Lilliputian multitude with a life of its own.

Early versions in Sweden and the Amazon had smaller numbers of figures arranged in concentric circles, looking out from a central space. But this installation is not so much protective as confrontational. If these mute, unmoving figures had mouths they would probably ask “Who are you looking at?” Who indeed.

Are these harmless dolls or terrible trolls? Are we in front of an adoring crowd or confronted by a threatening mob? Have they gathered for celebration, a demonstration or just curious observation? Are they asking the same things of us? Do they represent the state of our overpopulated planet or the past come back to haunt us - like the terracotta army unearthed in China in 1974?

Or are they, as Gormley suggests, the spirits of people yet to be born? Whoever they are, for a time the little clay people have taken over this space. We can’t come in, or join them there. We can only stand and stare.

HARVEY McGAVIN ‘Field for the British Isles’ can be seen at the Tullie House museum and art gallery in Carlisle from January 19 to March 17 as part of the Hayward Gallery’s national touring exhibition.

Weblinks Information about the artist: www.whitecube.comhtmlartistsangang_frset.html Field inspired children’s poems: http:fp.smycsheffsch.f9.co.ukCitrine_Field_title.html St Mary’s Church exhibition: www.fieldshrewsbury.comindex.php?flashChina’s terracotta army: www.travelchinaguide.comattractionshaanxixianterra_cotta_army