Overview

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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