CONGREGATION | TONY CRAGG

Tony Cragg (Liverpool, 1949) is undoubtedly one of the protagonists in the panorama of sculptural art. In his practice, Cragg employs the most classic and traditional raw materials – glass, wood, and stone – mixing them with various industrially produced materials – such as bronze, plastic, and metal – creating intriguing and never banal interactions with everyday objects, found and collected.

Congregation (1999) is an installation composed of a large boat, oars, lifeboats, a ladder, and other scrap materials, all made of wood and completely covered with metal hooks.
A critical representation, perhaps a bit cynical, aimed at contemporary society that reduces every object to its economic and productive value. The artist’s insight lies in the choice to completely cover this artwork’s components with hooks, thus nullifying the functionality of all the elements involved.
The work is imposing and gives back a fascinating yet disturbing image. The metal hooks can serve as handholds to grip or to hang other objects, but they can also be considered as sharp and painful pins, driven deep into the wood.

Cragg’s ‘congregation’ has nothing to do with religion; instead, it is a gathering, an assembly of elements aimed at “creating objects and images that do not exist in the natural or functional world but that can reflect and convey information and sensations about the world and its existence” (Tony Cragg).

Any material can become a vehicle of meaning if transformed and manipulated in the right way. Tony Cragg, thanks to his sculptural ability and artistic intuition, offers a vision of how matter influences our perception, pushing the object in question beyond its simple utilitarian function and elevating it to a new form in the artistic dimension.

21/02/2024

CONGREGATION | TONY CRAGG

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