British sculptor Tony Cragg's microscopic exploration of the materials of the artist's studio In Micro, the British sculptor (born 1949) offers a unique perspective on the materials of the artist. Using microscopic technology, Cragg photographs artist's tools such as paper and pens, materials such as limestone, marble and diabase, and the most vital artist tool of all, the body.
Révélée à la fin des années 70, l'oeuvre de Tony Cragg s'est affirmée comme profondément singulière, habitée à la fois par le sentiment du temps présent et la mémoire des origines, par la conquête du monde apparent et la fascination pour les structures invisibles. Archéologie de la vie moderne, ses sculptures puisent leurs images et leurs matériaux aux sources de la vie quotidienne et leur mode d'élaboration aux domaines les plus larges, incluant l'artisanat, l'industrie et la peinture.
This book is about the way artists generate an endless chain of substitute objects for something they can never quite find. It explores the work involved in art with a focus upon finding, gathering, and assembling charged and auratic objects on the wall beside the work. The author employs the term Das Gegenwerk or the work towards the work. This concept avoids definitive closure and expands the notion of drafting and related practices to include qualitative research methods. The multi-mode transitional practices of Das Gegenwerk are devoid of any demand for a preconceived goal but instead hinge upon the provisional and indeterminate. As such, it is a far cry from the binary logic of the computer and the design cycle but is of interest to an audience engaged with both. Das Gegenwerk hinges on our capacity to respond to the outside rather than the inwardness often attributed to creative agency. A fundamental belief of the book is that by investigating and adapting the practices of expert practitioners, we can gain an understanding of high-level creativity. It is neither a recipe nor a linear or cyclic approach. Rather, artistic creation is an interweave of transitional multi-mode practices where the overriding emphasis is on the handling or habituation of transitional materials in physical place. The author addresses the urgent need to provide a balance between the promise of new technology and our capacity to both respond to and work with what the world bestows.
"The future of sculpture has only just begun. Its potential is greater now than ever before, and its possibilities are just starting. Its language and its forms are just beginning to evolve." So says Tony Cragg, a believer not just in sculpture, but in freestanding, made-from-scratch abstraction. Cragg refuses to accept the domination of installation and the ready-made. His dedication to the form as he works in it--to its complexities, to its ability to interrogate the world and heighten our sensitivity--and his consistent espousal of that dedication, have given him an intriguing and unusual role in contemporary art. Cragg is a promoter of his medium in an age of anxiety about medium-based definitions, an age of crossover. There are plenty of words here, in an interview and three essays, but it's the sketches, watercolors, installation views, studio photographs and the sculptures themselves that make up the bulk of this new volume.
Angela Valamanesh is one of Australia's most intriguing ceramic artists. Her art is aesthetically minimal and cunningly simple, allowing us to interpret universal and ever-perplexing human, animal and organic forms. Valamanesh re-immerses us in the primeval rawness of form and function and, in doing so, the artist succeeds in visualising what many of her contemporaries have avoided - the symbiosis between art and science.
Form, Art and the Environment: Engaging in Sustainability adopts a pluralistic perspective of environmental artistic processes in order to examine the contributions of the arts in promoting sustainable development and culture at a grassroots level and its potential as a catalyst for social change and awareness. This book investigates how community arts, environmental creativity, and the changing role of artists in the Polis contribute to the goal of a sustainable future from a number of interdisciplinary perspectives. From considering the role that art works play in revealing local environmental problems such as biodiversity, public transportation and energy issues, to examining the way in which artists and art works enrich our multidimensional understanding of culture and sustainable development, Form, Art and the Environment advocates the inestimable value of art as an expressive force in promoting sustainable culture and conscious development. Utilising a broad range of case studies and analysis from a body of work collected through the international environmental COAL prize, this book examines the evolution of the relationship between culture and the environment. This book will be of interest to practitioners of the environmental arts, culture and sustainable development and students of Art, Environmental Science, and International Policy and Planning Development.
