Biography
Eight of the works are wall-mounted constructions, one is a work on canvas. These works incorporate images of the everyday including commonplace objects such as a coat hanger, head-phones or a pair of trousers, described in basic outlines. In the sculptural works Craig-Martin translates his line-drawings in various ways re-making the images out of thin strips of metal or painting them onto perspex or metal. In several works such as ‘Bicycle’ 1986, coloured rectangular panels of sheet metal are juxtaposed against the three-dimensional image.
Craig-Martin has said of these works: ‘...the drawing, through which one knows immediately what the object is, is only an aspect of the total work.’ Each work combines elements of the representational as well as the abstract. Richard Shone wrote in 1984 ‘For Craig-Martin art is a methodical transformation, and the objects he uses, while retaining their reality as signs, become part of a formal and referential language… His work has both conscious restraint and the enlivening presence of humour, curiosity and seductive detail.’
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