Tony Cragg

description

'Sometimes pictures are puzzled together. For example, Darwin's theories and a mass of geological studies have together led to visualisations of trilobite-infested primeval seas and vast tropical forests, dinosaurs, mammoths, and last but not least, man.'

Tony Cragg Artforum, March 1988

In Trilobites Tony Cragg has taken two motifs, that of the three-lobed body of a marine fossil of Palaeozoic times and a vessel from the laboratory. Neither reference is strange in his work, but the unseen notions that pull this piece together and make it appear as it does are many and varied. Cragg uses a plethora of materials and references for his sculpture, reduced here to a pair of simple primordial forms, but with a wider message. In their original state, trilobites may be around 4 cm in length; here we see them as if under the microscope. They have been enlarged, all the better for you to see the form and understand it. But Cragg's sculpture is not straightforward, there is also an underlying threat of unease. The laboratory vessels, set into the surfaces, spoil the simple enlargement, as if a horrible disease has infested the simple creatures. Might it therefore be possible to find here a metaphor for evolution in several ways? The natural, the engineered, or the accidental?

Whichever way we allow our thoughts to wander around the issues addressed in this sculpture, and the possibilities it offers, it is perhaps essential to remember that Cragg is not dogmatic, but is helping us to see more, more clearly.