Contemporary art - Animal, vegetable, mineral; Richard Cork goes down a chalk pit to assess the sculpture of Tony Cragg
Until recently, the Chalk Pit in Sussex was a mouldering dump, used over the past 50 years for little more than rubbish. But Wilfred and Jeannette Cass, who started their sculpture foundation in the surrounding stretch of Goodwood Forest ten years ago, decided to celebrate the past decade by transforming this four-acre tip. "I just got the diggers in," says Wilfred. "The whole operation took less than a week." His blithe words fail to convey the amount of preliminary care lavished on the Chalk Pit's design. The truth is that Cass, obsessed with displaying contemporary sculpture in the open air, was determined to make his ambitious new extension a congenial backdrop for work by the British sculptor Tony Cragg.
We set foot on the curving path carved out of the Sussex earth. On our level, reclining like a colossal slug, is a Cragg bronze, Tongue in Cheek. Its swollen, burnished forms lend the sculpture a sense of laziness. But the bulging surface is peppered with small holes and, in places, large apertures gape like greedy orifices. It is a sly work, replete with erotic suggestiveness. But then, high on the crest of a nearby hill, twists a monumental piece. Its tortuous rhythms, tightly interlocked, give the sculpture a seismic force. The calm in the Chalk Pit intensifies the turbulent power of the work, titled Declination. The sculpture seems all the more restless in a location where birdsong and wind-rustle provide the only consistent source of sound. Climbing the hill to study this dramatic tour de force more closely, we also notice a tall black sculpture rearing in the distance. A lively, sparring dialogue immediately springs up. The bright horizontal bulk of Declination contrasts absolutely with the dark, elongated verticality of the other work, Bent of Mind.
As a young sculptor in the early 1980s, Cragg made his name working with discarded materials scavenged from skips and waste lots. Although he concentrates now on more conventional resources, Cragg still seems capable of reinventing himself. This exhibition ambushes us with three-dimensional surprises at every turn.
The oldest piece on view is Bulb, a substantial stone carved in 2000 and installed now at a radial point in the woods. The title suggests that Cragg was fired by the notion of fresh growth, but the apex of the sculpture looks more like a phallic space-rocket, pointing its snout towards the sky. The sheer density of its weight and presence may suggest that it will never be able to achieve a Nasa-style lift-off. Even so, Bulb appears more airborne than the apparition in a nearby clearing. Called Ferryman, this mighty bronze nevertheless flaunts an amalgam of human and animal attributes. It is defiantly unclassifiable: Cragg delights in baffling us as we struggle to identify the ambiguous forms he presents.
The only disappointing piece here is a big, bulbous bronze called Formulations (Stance), which lapses into bovine stasis. It looks dull and inert compared with the leaping gusto of the other exhibits. Realising that Cragg produced it five years ago, I appreciate how much he has gained in verve and daring since then. If we walk to a lower level in this cleverly landscaped area, before pausing to look up from a patch of long grass, a two-piece stone carving sums up his most admirable qualities. In common with all his finest pieces, it undergoes spectacular changes as we walk around it. At first, these wavering columnar forms seem to resemble gigantic stacked plates. Then they stir memories of rock formations eroded by incess- ant storms. Before long we notice faces emerging in profile from each stack. They seem caught up in blurred movement.
The same feeling of instability is within Bent of Mind, a bronze enigma where two immense heads seem embroiled in a single mass. Lurching one way and another, this astonishing sculpture zigzags violently. Noses and mouths, hints of gut and spine catch us off-balance in a work both tough and sensual. Cragg never looked more inexhaustible, and everyone who relishes a display of sheer sculptural eloquence should hurry to Goodwood forthwith.
Tony Cragg's show continues at the Cass Sculpture Foundation, Goodwood (www.sculpture.org.uk) for one year
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