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David McCracken

Blow up Tokamak, 2016

stainless steel
700 x 2200 mm (diameter)

Blow up Tokamak is developed from a body of works I loosely refer to as ‘portraits of light’. I devised this series as a corollary to the ‘portraits of mass’ works I had been (and still am) developing that came out of going back to base principles in my work, which depict elemental forces or states of matter, mass was the first. The works were necessarily heavy and ‘massive’ and felt so to work on. I have come to think of them as ‘heavy metal ‘ with all the attendant posturing and drama implied. The inflated looking stainless steel works are the ‘pop’ to those ‘heavy metal’ sculptures and I wanted them to be light and playful and ‘materially honest’ – the stainless used to fabricate this piece is stretched and pressurised into the ‘plastic’ inflated-looking form similar to a child’s flotation ring.Tokamak is a Russian word referring to a torus shaped chamber for containing plasma in a continuous looping fusion reaction.

– David McCracken

David McCracken

born 1963, Auckland
Lives and works in Auckland

David McCracken began exhibiting in 2000 and describes his process as honouring or elevating a humble or utilitarian form into a memorable object. Continually developing his sculptural vocabulary and trying new techniques, for example hydroforming steel into complex compound forms with hydrostatic pressure, all these techniques are economical in terms of the fewest number of actions and ‘analogue in spirit’. He has experimented with water born sculpture since 2000, regarding it as both a challenge and the ‘perfect venue for sculpture’.

David McCracken exhibits nationally and internationally and has received a number of awards including the Parsons & Brinckerhoff Award for Excellence in Engineering (2013) and Wallace Arts Trust Awards (2014, 2013).

davidmccracken.nz
Represented by Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland.