tony cragg

Tony Cragg (born 1949) is a British-born sculptor.

Cragg was born in Liverpool, and following a period of work as a laboratory technician, he first studied art on the foundation course at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, Cheltenham and then at the Wimbledon School of Art1969-1973. During this period he was taught by Roger Ackling, who introduced him to the sculptors Richard Long and Bill Woodrow. He completed his studies on the sculpture course at Royal College of Art1973-1977 where he was a contemporary of Richard Deacon and Richard Wentworth. He left Britain in 1977 and moved to Wuppertal in Germany, where he has lived and worked since.

Many of Cragg's early works are made from found materials, discarded construction materials and disposed household objects. This gave him a large range of mainly man-made materials and automatically provided him with the thematic concerns that became characteristic of his work up to the present. During the 1970's he made sculptures using simple making techniques like stacking, splitting and crushing. In 1978 he collected discarded plastic fragments and arranged them into colour categories. The first work of this kind was called 'New Stones-Newtons Tones'. Shortly after this he made works on the floor and wall reliefs which created images. One of these works , Britain Seen From the North (1981), features the shape of the island of Great Britain on the wall, oriented so that north is to the left. To the left of the island is the figure of a man, apparently Cragg himself, looking at the country from the position of an outsider. The whole piece is made from broken pieces of found rubbish and is often interpreted as commenting on the economic difficulties Britain was going through at that time which had a particular effect on the north.

Later, Cragg used more traditional materials, such as wood, bronze and marble, often making simple forms from them, such as test tubes.

Cragg won the Turner Prize in 1988.

Selected list of works

• 1981 Britain Seen from the North - mixed media
• 1982 New Stones - mixed media
• 1985 New Figuration - colored plastic construction
• 1986 Raliegh - iron and granite
• 1986 Città - wood, paint and fiberboard
• 1987 The Spill - bronze
• 1987 Instinctive Reactions - steel
• 1988 George and the Dragon - mixed media
• 1988 On the Savannah - bronze
• 1988 Loco - wood
• 1988 Code Noah - bronze
• 1988 Container I - aquatint with spit bite aquatint
• 1988 Container II - aquatint with spit bite aquatint
• 1988 Container III - aquatint with spit bite aquatint
• 1989 Trilobites
• 1989 Kolbennblok - bronze
• 1989 Ordovician Pore - iron and granite
• 1990 Suburbs I - color spit bite with aquatint
• 1990 Suburbs II - color spit bite with aquatint
• 1990 Suburbs (Softground Series) - set of five softground etchings with aquatint
• 1990 Suburbs (Spitbite Series) - set of five color spit bite etchings with aquatint
• 1990-91 Amphore/Dose - bronze
• 1991 Minister - various metals
• 1991 Unchärferelation - wood
• 1991 Subcommittee - steel
• 1991-92 New Forms - bronze
• 1992 Bromide Figures - glass
• 1992 Terris Novalis - steel
• 1993 The Complete Omnivore - plaster wood and steel
• 1995 Forminfera - plaster
• 1997 Early Forms - bronze
• 1998 Pillars of Salt - clay with salt patina
• 1998 Envelope (Fig) - bronze
• 1999 Pazific - glass
• 2000 Lifetime - bronze
• 2000 Dancing Columns - stone
• 2003 Stainless Steel Pillar - stainless steel
• 2003 Distant Cousin - fiberglass
• 2004 On a Roll - bronze
• 2004 Relatives - bronze
• 2005 Bent of Mind - bronze
• 2005 I'm Alive - stainless steel