Writer Gavin Engelbrecht was one of the people chosen to be a model for Anthony Gormley's latest work, Domain Field, an experience that brought back a surprising memory.

STANDING on the porch with a hot African sun beating on my face, I can feel the wind tugging at the wings strapped to my back. They are made from wire coat hangers and crepe paper for my part as an angel in a Sunday School nativity play.

Transported back about 40 years, it is a memory I had forgotten about a long time ago, until now. And it could not be further removed from where I am - my head encased in a darkened shroud of plaster.

With the world cut off, I find myself paging through my memories and I recall one of my earliest with a startling clarity. Oblivious to a grating saw and hands tugging to remove the mask, I am re-living a moment of childhood bliss. A strong gust of wind chasing through the trees, prompts me to close my eyes and stand on tiptoes, as I imagined I am a real angel and about to fly off.

In that instant I am brought back to the present as the mask comes off and, through my closed eyes, my head is flooded with what seems like a heavenly light. Overwhelmed with the emotion, it is a quasi-religious experience. A moment of rebirth. If it wasn't so real it could be part of a carefully choreographed script.

But for me it is a special culmination to being one of the lucky few to be moulded for Antony Gormley's new Domain Field at the Gateshead Baltic.

When the call first went out for volunteers, the prospect of stripping for strangers was a daunting one. Joining more than 1,000 people for the first presentation, Gormley told us: "It is how you came into the world and how you will leave it. Vulnerable and exposed. It is when we are all ourselves."

I have never felt more exposed and vulnerable and yet so uninhibited and unselfconscious at the same time. Under the capable hands of Graham Bowes and Craig Dugan (within the privacy of a small canvas tent) I am dextrously wrapped in clingfilm - with a good dollop of Vaseline to prevent the plaster sticking in my armpits. Once fitted with a bespoke suit of hessian, the body plaster is slapped on, bathing the body in a warm glow before setting rigid.

Being cut out feels like emerging from a chrysalis. Only I am no butterfly. The same bumps are in the same unwelcome places. Arms are followed by my head, before I join the collection of moulds taken from people ranging from two-and-a-half to 84 years - of all body shapes and from all walks of life. Among those completed include three brothers, a mother and her two sons, a husband and his pregnant wife.

Graham says: "Apart from the initial embarrassment from the purely physical aspect, everyone came out feeling they had achieved something.

"Their main motivation was because they wanted to be part of something bigger than themselves. To be involved."

Gormley describes his work as the "registration of lives of people who live here, contributing to a collective energy field made up of individual pieces."

Each of the 290 finished sculptures are a random mix of steel bars of various lengths welded within the mould to form a three-dimensional drawing in space.

The collection of domains occupy the entire 800 square metres of Level 4 art space, forming a sparkling metallic mist through which people can walk.

The exhibition also includes three of Gormley's expansion pieces, Body, Fruit and Earth from 1993. These large-scale cast iron sculptures, which resemble pieces of real fruit, each have an imprint of the artist's own body inside them. And on Level 3 is the extensive work Allotment, made in Malmo in 1996.

Gormley, famed for creating the Angel of the North which towers over the A1 motorway in Gateshead, says the Domain Field exhibition has more than fulfilled his expectations. He says: "I think ideas are ideas and things are facts and facts are very much better than ideas. I'm just thrilled with it. It's a wonderful feeling. We have been planning this exhibition for two years and it's taken nearly three months of very hard work to get to this point and it feels very good indeed."

He says his latest work ranks alongside anything he had ever done before, including work from the 1990s called The Field which is made up of hundreds of terracotta figures.

He says: "I think this is the most relaxed of all my work. I know it looks fairly spiky as an object, but what it conveys is a lovely openness. All of this work comes from the Field - a very confrontational piece which asked the question "what are we doing with our earth?".

"The Field doesn't allow us into the space it occupies, whereas Domain is very inviting. You feel you are invited into this work. I see it as an energy field. They are very unmilitary, very much unlike The Field and the terracotta army and any other of my collective works. They are not facing the same direction, the are consciously facing in different directions."

Coming "face-to-face" with my own Domain is as uncanny as my childhood flashback was surreal. Entering the Domain Field for the first time, a map had yet to be drawn showing who was where. And yet when my eyes fall on it there was an unfathomable and instant flash of recognition. I note down the number 99 written on the heel. Confirmation that I had been right sends a shiver down my spine - adding to special memories that will last forever.