Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg was born in 1949 in Liverpool (GB), he lives and works in Wuppertal (DE)

The renowned British sculptor Tony Cragg explores the complex relationships between the natural and man-made world to create an innovative, distinctive sculptural language. A self-described ‘radical materialist’, the artist is ‘interested in the internal structures of material that result in their external appearance’. Originally informed by British land art and performance art, his work is inspired by the macro and micro structures found in nature, as well as an engagement with industrial materials and processes. He constantly explores and expands the possibilities of new materials which, in turn, help to determine the form each sculpture takes and the emotional register it occupies.

In his early works, Cragg created accumulations of found objects, later applying the same stacking principles to thin layers of wood to form undulating organic structures. These works recall natural geological forms, such as the sedimentation of mineral particles to create strata or the weathering of rock by the forces of wind and water. Recent works suggest the movement and transience of elements caught in the process of transformation, as in stainless steel forms that convey the fluidity of molten metal. Art historian Jon Wood notes that these “remind us that all is ultimately moving, seething and active in the world and that nothing is really static.”