Tony Cragg - Working Practice

Working Practice

Many of Cragg's early works are made from found materials, discarded construction matedisposed household materials. This gave him a large range of mainly man-made materials and facilitated the thematic concerns that became characteristic of his work up to the present. During the 1970s he made sculptures using simple techniques such as 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 formed 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.

Terris Novalis in Consett is his only large-scale permanent public artwork in the UK. Consisting of two massively enlarged stainless steel engineering instruments, its material acknowledges the former importance of steel to the town. It was installed in 1997 on the Sea to Sea cycle route between Whitehaven and Sunderland.

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

Cragg emphasizes that his sculptures are not made in factories but by himself. He likens work made by fabricators to relatives that you have never met. In a 2007 interview with Robert Ayers from ARTINFO, Cragg says about his excitement regarding his work,