Tony Cragg
IN AND OUT OF MATERIAL
Demonstration
Tony Cragg : I
basically mean the effectiveness of the object, of the material. But
because the metaphysical and physical association are already
occupied, I'm interested in somehow establishing some relationship
with the materials and the things around me without using any
preconceived notions of an already occupied language. It is a bit
like taking away a Christian name and depersonalising something. What
I mean is that it's an attempt on my side to restart the relationship
with the material, which I think sculptors have to do anyway.
Jon Wood : Thinking of
the increased awareness that this side of your work tries to capture
and harness in the viewer, can you say a bit about the kind of
sensitivities that you would like to be heightened? What would you
see your work as demonstrations of and for? Your sculptures are
triggers for what kind of thinking?
Tony Cragg : Well there
is an attitude to looking at things and to looking at objects and
materials which is based on a meditative tradition of contemplation :
the universe in a grain of sand idea, or maybe even religious ideas
where you actually get in contact on some level with the material
world, on a deeper level than the one you obviously are capable of
reaching in an everyday situation, so on an extraordinary level,
outside of your own experiences.
I am not saying that
that's not interesting or important. But I also think that this
leaves the battleground for the everyday life to be governed by
non-contemplative thought and non-meditative thought. And this may
sound like a mixture of terms, but I think that there is a job to be
done even on an everyday, “second for second” level of life—on
the experiential level of life. I think there is a job to be done
here improving the quality of contemplation about an awareness of the
material world—the material world seen as an immediate extension of
the communal social effort, the cultural effort that you are part of.
Jon Wood : How does it
move from being an individual contemplative experience to being one
that has a communal relevance?
Tony Cragg : In the
main part it only has communal relevance. All you can do for yourself
is formulate your sentences, cook yourself a meal that suits you, get
dressed in a fashion that suits you, and everything else you have to
put up with as having been made by other people for you. But
obviously, even if they didn't ask your permission, there's something
consensual about that, isn't there? Even though you don't like it, it
doesn't look like you're making an effort to change it. And maybe
there's some active thing there. My idea is that even if I don't like
it, I wouldn't be able to change a great deal of it, but I could sow
the seed for some change in the direction that I would feel would be
important. It's a measure of how much responsibility one takes for
the change. Looking for more in the visual world around me and
looking for more language, in a sense, is one way of heightening
sensibilities and expanding a vocabulary and then expanding the
responses to a vocabulary is a way of heightening sensibilities. I'm
not a politician, but I think we still live in a world that is
greatly dominated by mesmerism and mystical models, which are very
distracting because they actually stop us from really trying to face
reality.
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