Tony Cragg (b. 1949)

'Works in the Early Forms group are always to do with vessels transforming and mutating into one another in space. Vessels are a strong metaphor for the body and organisms of the natural world and in addition, from an archeological viewpoint, they are the means by which we gauge our own culture and other cultures. Early Forms retain they own integrity as revealed by their skin: one can see the real outside surface while it reveals its interior volumes.'

(T. Cragg, quoted in New Thing Breathing: Recent Work by Tony Cragg, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, Liverpool 2000, p. 28).