Tony Cragg's Interview with Jon Wood

Tony Cragg interviewed by Jon Wood:

Jon Wood met up with Tony Cragg in Sweden this summer to talk with him about the
exhibition and about some of the thinking behind his recent sculpture.

Tony Cragg: We've been planning this exhibition for about two or three years and, at
the beginning, I thought I'd do a whole show about Rational Beings. But more
recently, since the work has developed in the last eighteen months, I decided it would
be much more interesting to show the ways in which Rational Beings have been
approached via Early Forms. So that's the main function of the exhibition really for
me: to show the synthetic relationship between these bodies of work. I realised that
that would be quite a lot for one room but, it should function especially in such a
large, well-proportioned room, which gives the work a great deal of monumentality.
And so my idea was to populate this space with these sculptures.

...

John Wood: And for viewers walking around the works, looking across early work and later
work, what would you like them to take away with them?

Tony Cragg: I just want to give them an alternative: an alternative to looking at nature, and an
alternative to looking at a dull-headed industrial utilitarian reality. Every sculptor
wants to give you an alternative to looking at nature. You know nature is wonderful
and interesting, and will be the source of everything, but ultimately, as sculptors, we
have to express ourselves on our own terms

More form this extended sculpture Interview:
http://www.tony-cragg.com/texte/Tony%20Cragg%20interviewed%20by%20Jon%20Wood.pdf