Tony Cragg

Description

In its Goodwood setting, positioned atop the bright green of manicured grass, alongside the radiant white of chalk and the intense blue of sky, Declination appears to be hovering in an otherworldly paradise. "Dense and impacted, the mass of solid bronze might easily have looked lumpen and inert. But simply by painting it bright yellow, Cragg lends a gaiety and lightness to a piece that changes form as we circle it, as shapes that suggest first plastic bottles, then a tuba, a loudspeaker, a saddle or a car engine emerge and then recede". From one side the mass evokes a creature that has curled up to rest, from another the reverberations of a mechanical machine. The slick bright yellow of the piece is reminiscent of the brightly coloured plastic objects Cragg used for his early wall pieces.

Though seemingly abstract, the form is undoubtedly full or references to materials and objects. Just as the word 'Declination' holds numerous meanings (either "a refusal to accept", "the angular deviation of the compass needle east or west from true north" or "a sloping or bending downward") so, too, the subject of Declination is perpetually on the verge of change and thus cannot be placed. It "escapes categorisation, in spite of its bold colour and form and the sensual shapes within it, which invite an almost contemplative quality". At an early stage in his career Cragg realised that he "was going to have to make objects in which the form makes itself apparent as an external skin" , however, here the hollow bronze is disguised to convey an impenetrable mass.