Meet renowned sculptor Sir Tony Cragg who is presenting a major new exhibition at Castle Howard

“Castle Howard is a completely different landscape and setting and almost a different culture in some ways, and I thought ‘let’s try it.’ I haven’t shown in Great Britain very often in public situations in the last few years and where am I going to exhibit my works if not in these kinds of situations? So in a way it’s a no-brainer.”

Tony Cragg at Castle Howard, which runs until September 22, will be the first major exhibition by a leading contemporary artist to be held across both the house and grounds of the historic country estate, recognised by millions around the world as the location for Brideshead Revisited and Bridgerton.

The exhibition includes Cragg’s magnificent sculpture Over The Earth (2015), which will be shown outside for the first time, along with numerous other major works including Senders (2018), Points of View (2018) and Versus (2012). There will also be numerous smaller sculptures and works on paper on display inside the house, including work in the Great Hall.

For Cragg, it’s also an opportunity to tap into our rich sculptural heritage.

“Henry Moore was in many ways the first contemporary modern sculptor that put works in an outdoor setting. Then there are artists like Richard Long and Anthony Caro and places like Yorkshire Sculpture Park. So I think there’s an enormous tradition in Britain for looking at sculpture in outdoor settings and I’m happy to be part of that.”

Cragg’s thought-provoking work constantly explores new ways of expressing our relationship with the physical world, utilising an array of materials including steel, bronze, glass and wood, as well as more unconventional materials such as plastic, fibreglass and Kevlar. “Between man-made things and nature there is an enormous gap… and I think sculpture does bridge that gap,” he says.

The sculptor is speaking to me from his home in Wuppertal, in northwest Germany, where he’s lived and worked since 1977 after moving there with his first wife who came from the city. This was the year he made a name for himself as the youngest participant in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Sculpture Exhibition in London, showing his work alongside that of such luminaries as Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth.

Since then he’s established himself as one of the world’s leading sculptors. He represented Britain at the Biennale in Venice in 1988, the same year he won the Turner Prize, and his work has been acquired by numerous prestigious public and private collections. His large bronze sculpture Werdendes (meaning ‘that which is becoming’) was installed outside the German Parliament in Berlin in 2020, and in the last two years he has enjoyed major exhibitions in Vienna and Munich.

What makes his story all the more remarkable is he had no interest in becoming an artist growing up. He was born in Liverpool in 1949, and after leaving school he started working as a technician at the National Rubber Producers Association with a vague idea of going to university to study biochemistry. However, he found the work so dull he started drawing to pass the time.

“I was 19 years old. I was so bored in that place,” he says. “I’d not been at all interested in art as a young person, it just wasn’t part of my life.”

But this was the late 60s and with the world changing at a dizzying pace Cragg felt compelled to do something, so he quit his job and applied to go to art school, gaining a place at Gloucestershire College of Art in Cheltenham. “It was a very traditional foundation year and I was told ‘next week you’re going to be making sculpture,’ and I thought ‘oh, God, that must be awful.’” Instead, it turned out to be a life-changing moment.

“It sounds a little bit dramatic but really in my life if ever there has been a kind of epiphany it was then. I just found moving the material around, changing shapes, the volumes, the silhouettes and the surfaces, really exciting. I knew nothing about sculpture but that’s how it started.”

Cragg went on to study at Wimbledon School of Art and then the Royal College of Art, in London, and quickly became one of the leading lights of his generation of artists and associated with a group that became known as the “New British Sculptors”.

Cragg stood out from the crowd by challenging viewers with new objects and hybrid forms that moved away from established representational approaches to sculpture.

He believes attitudes to art have moved on in this country from when he started out as a sculptor. “For the general population, the idea of people really being involved in art has only developed in the last 30 or 40 years. I know when you go to a museum in Britain today it’s packed out, and thank God. When we were working in the late 60s as artists we did talk about changing society. We had this idea that we would have an influence on society and not just be a kind of joke.”

And he remains resolute in his belief in the power of art and culture to improve our lives for the better.

“My young life was fantastically moved by music – by the pop music of the Beatles and Bob Dylan and then getting to know jazz and people like John Coltrane, and then onto classical music. If you’re interested in music then you have a richer life. And if you use your eyes to observe the world and out of those observations develop thoughts and emotions, then you also have a much richer life. That’s really what art does for you – it’s a discipline that offers you that practice of looking at things. When you’re looking at paintings you’re not looking at anything outside of yourself, you’re only looking at yourself, and I think that’s unbelievably important.”

At its heart, Cragg’s work reflects his unending fascination with the world around us. “I was collecting fossils when I was eight or nine years old so I’ve always been interested in stuff. It sounds like a silly thing to say, because most people love being in nature, but I do love being in nature. It just reinforces the sense of astonishment and astoundment at being alive,” he says.

“I’ve had a very privileged life. What I do is I spend time in my studio, I draw and make things and not everyone is afforded that kind of luxury,” he says.

“I know the world is made up of material, it’s the only thing I see around me. I don’t believe in anything else. The material world is so infinitely complicated and sublime that we can’t just leave it to scientists and businessmen to shape the future – and that’s really what I think artists do.”

Tony Cragg exhibition at Castle Howard, near Malton, North Yorkshire, runs from May 3 to September 22. For more information and prices visit www.castlehoward.co.uk