Tony Cragg, ‘We’, 2015, Bronze, Unique version from a max of six casts

Tony Cragg
We, 2015

Bronze, Unique version from a max of six casts
190 (h) x 59 x 57 cm
74¾ (h) x 23¼ x 22½ in
Cragg has deployed self-portraiture throughout his work, from the early shadow drawings on the beach on the Isle of Wight onwards. His own body gives him a direct and personal access to the world and he regularly has recourse to it both as a unit of personal emotional and intellectual measurement, and as a vehicle to convey actions, state. ments and engagements. In this way the surrounding world enters in this artistic self-portraiture, as do naturally occurring forms and structures - and the role of particles, layers, compounds, crystals and envelopes all play very dynamic roles across his works, fuelling his hybrid thinking and charging the generative, reproductive continuum of his sculpture making.

We is the most recent manifestation within these key strands of his work. It was made by scanning a pre-existent plaster cast of the artist's head and then duplicating that original source object. The sculpture comprises hundreds of these 3D scans, all looking in the same direction thus giving it clear front, back and sides and spatially arranged into an overall grape-like form. Scanning forms that have been made by the artist's hand has become a regular activity in many contemporary artists' practices. It avoids unnecessarily long working processes and reduces significantly the materials used in the traditional process of mould making.

We is an image of multiplicity and plurality, but also of singularity and individual identity. The expression on the artist's face is one of calm and contemplation, eyes open
not shut.

Cat - Tony Cragg, Infinite forme e bellissime, 2025, The Museo Nazionale Romano, Rome. p. 124