Exhibition of Tony Cragg

In our media-controlled world driven by movement, as a quasi-classical sculptor Cragg ventures to dedicate his work to the free-standing sculpture. Cragg’s sculptures play with the perception of people, where a continual attempt is made to categorise the undefined by projections of familiar forms and patterns.

He works with apparent stratifications, twists, distensions and shifts in the material along an imaginary articulated column, or ‘spine’. His elegant sculptures of wood, stone, plaster or bronze inspire the imagination with their playful convolutions. We explore the positive and negative of their silhouettes, the interiors and exteriors in the search for familiar structures, forms, bodies and landscapes.

And those already familiar with Cragg’s new sculptures search for the faces which permeate his work so strikingly. Held fast in one of these chiselled stone profiles, they are brought to life as we move, altering their facial expressions, wandering up and down the sculpture, furcating, hovering, until they eventually lose themselves in their own twists.

“The intention was not to make portraits, but rather to mark the axial views with recognisable silhouettes. One step away from the axis and the faces start to grimace, and even further away from the axis the column melts into unexpected sculptural volumes.”

(Tony Cragg: In and Out of Material, 2006.)