Tony Cragg
The Spill
1987
Description
On leaving school and before enrolling at Wimbledon College of Art, Tony Cragg worked as a laboratory assistant in Liverpool. The experience has emerged again and again in his work through images of laboratory vessels which he interprets variously as literal enlargements, as forms which indicate different kinds of evolution, or as shapes which are altered through his intervention. In Spill he has taken as his subject a vessel for heating liquid. Clearly, the vessel has fallen over as it has no base. It is the kind of container that should be held in a metal collar above a Bunsen burner in order that the contents may be heated. The liquid inside this particular container has spilt, the container lies on its side and the contents stream out (at Goodwood into the path of the passing visitor.) A metaphor for the molten quality of bronze is certainly apparent here, as it is a possible interpretation of the subject and is certainly integral to the object.
Cragg's works are full of play on certain kinds of reality, and this work is no exception. The sculpture looks as the title insists it should, but there is much more to delve into. In terms of dimension, this is is a simple enlargement, for the glass container in the laboratory would have been a fraction of the size. But there is more to think about. How differently do we perceive this vessel when it is presented in another medium? Why is there a spill? Who was responsible? What would the liquid have been? The scenarios are endless, but all come from this simple proposition.
Tony Cragg pushes forward the possibilities for sculpture more than many of his contemporaries, and Spill is a prime example of this achievement.
