Please paraphrase this More than 8,000 slices of Mother's Pride bread coated in paraffin wax are laid out into a patterned grid formation to resemble the weather-beaten surfaces of brickwork. Into the centre of the grid are two ghostly, body shaped indentations laid out flat like coffins in the ground, each forming one half of Gormley's figure.

Displayed during a two man show at London's Whitechapel Gallery, this work is a much celebrated, early example of Gormley's developing style as he explored the parameters of his own body, following on from his 1970s Sleeping Place sculptures. To create the work, he ate through enough slices of bread to leave the recessed areas behind, carefully calculating with mathematical precision the exact proportions of his body. "It was like eating to a (musical) score," he recalled. To prevent the complete decay of the remaining bread, Gormley deconstructed the stack and dipped the slices of bread into paraffin wax, preserving them in their gently mouldering state.

Commenting on the work's underlying meaning, Gormley wrote, "When making Bed I had this revelation that between what we eat and how we shelter ourselves was our condition and it became obvious that I had to address this in the most direct way possible and use my own experience as a template." The act of ingesting bread turned the simple, everyday ritual of eating, an act integral to human survival, into a work of art, pre-empting the Young British Artists of the 1990s, who, amongst other things, sought ways of humanising the gallery space by bringing in aspects of their own lives. Former director of The Whitechapel and later Tate, Nicholas Serota spoke of the work's potent message, which it still retains, pointing out, "The piece is a relic of an action - Antony did eat that bread - and today people respond to it like a relic. It remains an evocative and powerful image." Parallels can also be drawn between the consumption of the bread and the taking of Catholic sacrament, a significant ritual of Gormley's childhood. This imbues the process of the creation of the work and, therefore, the finished piece with a sense of religious purpose and this is also reflected in the traditional death-like pose of the absent figure.