Untitled
Stainless steel sculpture ‘Untitled’ by artist Dave McCracken. Born in Auckland McCracken began making sculptures in his teens, eventually upskilling in advanced metal fabrication to make use of inexpensive metal waste materials. His practice has won him many accolades and awards in New Zealand and Australia including the Wallace Arts Trust Vermont Award in 2014.
A lot of McCracken’s work aims to elevate more humble materials and banal forms into a memorable object. This untitled sphere is likely part of McCracken’s “Nice round figures” series consisting of welded stainless steel spheres of various sizes. Some of the spheres are highly polished, reflecting the environment. Others have a matte finish and obscure the environment down to blurs of colour or simply reflected patches of light.
‘Untitled’ is the former, a highly polished and elegant sphere that reflects the landscape to such a degree that it would blend in easily from a distance were it not for the droplet shaped gouges repeated around the outside. Emulating the automotive glamour of polished metal this piece embodies the artists self professed drive to make beautiful objects. Unlike some of his other spheres, the breaks in the surface are precise, equal, and balanced; interrupting the reflective surface and further distorting and manipulating the surrounding space. This is a sculpture that is not only to be looked at, but looks back.
McCracken considers the language of form and objects as a struggle between what it denotes and its connotations. While we see a reflective sphere, we could also note that it is reminiscent of a ball bearing, a common and often overlooked but integral element in many modern mechanisms. Is the artist drawing inspiration from his boat building and construction background? Or is it simply the elegance of the sphere in and of itself? The fact that it remains untitled emphasises McCracken’s interest in elevating the banal and engaging the viewer to dig deeper.
This is not the result of quick work either. The materiality of the piece demonstrates the artist’s skill and the time involved in construction. The precision shows careful calculation and in depth consideration. The artist mentions his primary intention is to create work that is built around a fundamental contradiction between material, vernacular, and form as he believes this allows viewers to project meaning into the piece. And so we the viewer are left standing in front of a nameless but familiar form, reflecting us and our surroundings, and grounding us in the space as part of the piece.
While reminiscent of artworks like those of Anish Kapoor or Jeppe Hein, ‘Untitled’ is similar in that it is immersive and dynamic by the materiality but stationary and common in its display. As humans, we are among the few in the animal kingdom that can recognise our reflection due to our higher order cognition and these works take advantage of that. However, where ‘Untitled’ differs is in its elusiveness. McCracken describes his sculpture process as a soap, a slow kind of drama, and audience-less performance. Once the piece is presented, however, it seems the pace does not pick up as we are left to pick apart the work's intent, if, in reality, it is there at all