Mr. Cragg, as an artist, what motivates you to get up in the morning and start work on a sculpture?
I would say that one motivation for me is that there’s so much more to do. That’s an incredible thing. There are endless possibilities in the materials, the territory is enormous and endless and wide, and that’s really motivation enough to keep looking, keep discovering, keep making things.
How do you go about exploring those possibilities? Is it just about instinctively reacting to the material?
Well, you have to be careful with that. “Working instinctively” could just mean that I make anything that is interesting or looks interesting! No, no, in the background of my instinctive reaction to the material is always another level of concern: I’m genuinely interested in sculpture! My father thought it was an awful thing, a waste of time, but for me, it’s a very rare use of materials. Humans use material for utilitarian reasons, but sculpture is not made to be sat on or drunk out of or whatever, it’s just developing new forms that give you new ideas, new emotions, new terms, new language. It gives you a lot of freedom.
“I’m not so concerned with what the thing looks like at the end. I’m often surprised about what I’ve ended up with.”
So how would you describe your sculpting process, if not instinctive or reactive?
It sounds instinctive only because we don’t have a better word for it, but there’s something very, very logical in it as well. I’m not so concerned with what the thing looks like at the end. I’m often surprised about what I’ve ended up with. I build from the inside, sometimes it’s a geometric figure, sometimes it’s another kind of figure, but I build it up, and suddenly we have a figure in front of us. When you’re working with clay, for example, I mean, you see a myriad of forms, and the artist’s work is just to stand by that material until something happens with the form, until we’ve discovered something — and it’s probably something nobody’s ever seen or ever thought was important. But you find it important because you’ve discovered this thing. I’m convinced that it is exactly the same for a musician who’s just vibrating the air, moving the air. The musician doesn’t know it when he’s composing it. It’s not like singing a song. They don’t know where this is going, and that’s fine.
It’s this very magical experience of making something from nothing, no?
Right, and the different materials allow you to really explore different forms and functions! Bronze is a fantastic material, it doesn’t have any surface tension when it’s a liquid so you can make fantastically complicated polymorphic forms — it’s wonderful. On the other hand, steel is a very strong material, it’s one that we run our society on. It behaves very differently from bronze, you can’t make the same things but it’s still very interesting. So the main thing in choosing a material is: where do you want to go with it?
And do you generally know where you want to go before you start? Because you mentioned already that you sometimes surprise yourself.
I’m not very strategic about what I’m doing. I’m just swimming in it. Sometimes I like a color, so I gravitate towards that, I love cadmium, saffron, rust… I like colors that remind me of minerals. That can influence the material I use. But no, I usually just work on something and it starts to develop.
How do you then know when a piece is finished?
Sometimes some of the things I’ve been working on for years and years, they’re just not getting any better or not going anywhere, so they fade away. And sometimes you start something, and within a few days, it develops enough that it feels complete. Each piece is different and develops itself in a different way. Some artists make the same thing for 50 years, and that doesn’t interest me. My current show at Lisson Gallery will be my 18th with this gallery, I’ve been working with them since 1974, and all the shows have been different. You don’t repeat a show. So this solo show is comprised of pieces I’ve made in the last three years.
The pieces in this show are seemingly very singular, the forms are different, the material is different… How do choose which pieces belong together for an exhibition, or even for a series like Hedge, or Stand?
There have been lots of groups of things over the years. When I’m making exhibitions, I like the idea of knowing: “This is where the mountains are. Here are the valleys. There’s the forest and the river’s running here.” I like to think about the show as a composite picture of a world. So I give them little groups, almost like families, or any way you want to look at it. There has to be some sort of categorization.
You described a kind of artistic landscape… Are you interested in nature as an artist?
I love geology! When I was at school, I actually thought about becoming a geologist. I love to know what’s under my feet, I love knowing the landscape. You can tell a lot about history from what’s underneath you, you can see the plants and the animals on top of it, and nature in itself. Nature is the ultimate kind of compendium, isn’t it?
When did that interest first open up for you?
I’m not sure, I mean, I’ve loved nature since my childhood. It sounds a bit embarrassing, but I just simply loved collecting rocks and minerals and fossils. I found a fossil when I was eight years old, and that was a fascinating thing. My brother and I found it together and we initially wanted to keep it a secret but then we showed our father this thing, and he said, immediately, “It’s an echinoid, a star urchin, and this was here 350 million years ago when this land was an ocean.” We were little boys and so that idea was just fascinating. I think that’s when I realized that one thing, anything, is a portal to another reality. Everything you look at! You go into it, and it immediately opens up into all sorts. It could be a fossil, it could be a bit of plastic. It could be a word on a page…
Could it also be a sculpture?
(Laughs) Well, we’re working on that! Whatever it is, you go into it, and it just opens up new worlds for you.