David McCracken

b. 1963, New Zealand
Lives in Tāmaki Makaurau

Sculptor David McCracken works primarily in fabricated steel. His practice often concerns elevating humble, everyday objects into memorable, large-scale sculptures. He started sculpting in his early days by carving driftwood and worked making props for sets before moving into metals. A job in his youth working for a craftsman who made all his own tools proved to be foundational for McCracken. There he learnt that discarded material could be transformed into something useful, even beautiful.

After years of working with metals, often experimenting at a large scale, McCracken has developed innovative ways of working that influence the forms he makes. He uses techniques such as ‘drop-forging’, where large steel weights are dropped onto sheet aluminium from a crane, and ‘hydroforming’, a way of stretching steel with hydrostatic pressures. McCracken is interested in manipulating materials to generate their own form, as opposed to casting, which he views to be a more static process.

For McCracken, the act of making generates ideas. Skill and workmanship are central to his approach, and he is interested in the idea that the quality of one’s work can be a symbol of respect for others. Flexible belts and mechanical gears have been the subject of his recent investigation. He states, “The physics of mechanical gears have a rigorous mathematical precision, so the surfaces of meshing teeth never lose contact with each other when they're under load. It is something I have come to see as a metaphor for communication, the need being to maintain contact.”

McCracken’s work Diminish and Ascend, 2013 is a permanent fixture in Christchurch’s Botanic Gardens. In 2017 he was selected for the exhibition Not then, not now, not ever in Berlin, along with artists from 31 countries including Anish Kapoor, Kiki Smith and Miroslaw Balka. He has exhibited at numerous outdoor exhibitions including Headland Sculpture on the Gulf, Shapeshifter and Sculpture in the Gardens. In 2013 he was recipient of the Parsons & Brinckerhoff Award for Excellence in Engineering at Headland Sculpture on the Gulf.

Gow Langsford Gallery has represented David McCracken since 2009.

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David McCracken’s newest exhibition, Plain View, brings one of his ongoing concepts of the ‘bomb’ to fruition. In recent years, the bomb form has been an evolutionary process for McCracken, thematically and artistically, as well as through his own personal connection to the objects.

The bombs are based on the forms of early aircraft delivered bombs deployed in 1944; in particular the Tallboy and Grandslam models. Both of these famous bombs were designed by British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis. McCracken recalls the photographs of the bombs that he saw as a young boy and found himself drawn to the purity and the elegance of their form. It was following this that he delved into their historical use, development and deployment. Despite the destructive nature of these bombs and their historical context, these sculpture realisations have an inviting quality to them. On the surface, they are shiny and covetable; they entice the viewer in and reflect their surroundings back to us. They look luxurious and lavish, with the fear that should shroud them having been stripped away; their true purpose lost. They now take the form of these playful, aesthetic, inflatable toys that transcend their materiality; a stark contrast to the utilitarian objects that they have been derived from.

Their playful and whimsical quality does not, however, represent the labour intensive process that is undertaken to manufacture them. Each bomb is individually fabricated from McCracken’s own designs using stainless steel plates that are hydroformed under pressure to generate the organic wrinkles and folds, giving the material a lightness that realistically it does not have. They have subtle differences, unique to each bomb. The reflective finish is achieved by grounding and polishing the stainless steel, with a final lick of coloured industrial paint completing the sculptures.