Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg is a British-born sculptor/ artist. His early works are made from found materials, discarded construction materials, and disposed household materials. This gave him a large range of mainly man-made materials and facilitated the thematic concerns that became characteristic of his work up to the present. During the 1970s he made sculptures using simple techniques such as stacking, splitting, and crushing.

In 1978 he collected discarded plastic fragments and arranged them into colour categories. The first work of this kind was called 'New Stones-Newtons Tones'. Shortly after this he made works on the floor and wall reliefs, which formed images. Later, Cragg used more traditional materials, such as wood, bronze, and marble, often making simple forms from them.

Cragg won the Turner Prize in 1988. In 2001 he received the CBE for services to art and in 2002 the prestigious Piepenbrock Award for sculpture. He was awarded the Praemium Imperiale in 2007.

Portrait photo by Mark Ellidge