Tony Cragg (born 1949 in Liverpool, UK, lives in Wuppertal, Germany) is one of the internationally acclaimed contemporary British artists who, from the late 1970s onwards, developed complex and many-sided works within the field of sculpture. In the 1980s he became known for his object-sculptures and wall pieces made from collected plastic and other discarded items, including works such as Grey Moon from The UBS Art Collection. In 1988 he won the Turner Prize for his exhibition as the British representative at the Venice Biennale. Interested in the relationship between the natural and the artificial industrial worlds, and the sculptural qualities of everyday objects, his assemblage-works of the 1980s represent an intense interplay of forms, colors, surfaces and textures. In Grey Moon, the moon appears as a metaphor for archaic nature, created by an arrangement of gray and white plastic pieces, symbols of contemporary industrial civilization. “I am concerned in weaving a network of associations, relationships, techniques and images. Rather than a linear progression I want a three dimensional quality to my work over a period of time”, is how Tony Cragg once described his aims in sculpture. True to these he has, during the last few decades, created assemblage-works, together with a variety of other sculptural series made from diverse materials. They include huge sculptures of a compact morphology, and present works which investigate the relationship between geometric and biomorphic forms, individual pillars, sculptures in the form of huge vases and arrangements of glass bottles which can be seen as a symbolic reference to archaic sculptural vessels.

Reference:

Tony Cragg. Signs of Life, exh.cat.,Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der BRD, Bonn/Germany, 2003