'Raleigh' is a cast iron and granite sculpture created by Tony Cragg in 1986. It is located behind the Pier Masters House at the Albert Dock in Liverpool.
A plaque situated facing the sculpture is inscribed as follows;
'Tony Cragg b.1949
Raleigh 1986
Metal and Stone
Tate Collection, purchased 1987
T04903
Attempting to move, handle or climb on this sculpture
is not allowed and may cause personal injury'
"‘Raleigh’ is made from six separate elements, two cast-iron bollards, two granite bollards and two horn-shaped forms that the artist had specially cast in iron. They are arranged on the ground with the four bollards providing a base or platform for the two horn-shaped forms. The title of the piece appears to relate to the sixteenth-century navigator Sir Walter Raleigh.
The sculpture was made in Liverpool in August 1986 as part of a series of summer events organised by the Tate Gallery in collaboration with the Merseyside Development Corporation and the Walker Art Gallery, to draw public attention to the development of the Tate Gallery Liverpool two years prior to its opening.
Photographs of the process of manufacture and installation of ‘Raleigh’ are reproduced in the 1986 Tate Gallery Liverpool catalogue, pp.16–21. The six elements in the work were assembled on site and arranged by a crane, in accordance with the artist's instructions. The final arrangement had not been predetermined and was established in an ad hoc way according to the way in which the individual pieces interlocked in situ. The work was assembled on an area of grass adjacent to the Pier master's house, close to the Tate Gallery Liverpool on the Albert Dock, overlooking the River Mersey.
Although it is now sited permanently there, it was not originally intended to be site-specific. After being displayed at Liverpool, it was moved and reassembled at the Hayward Gallery, London in March 1987 on the occasion of Cragg's Arts Council exhibition. Following its acquisition by the Tate Gallery, ‘Raleigh’ was returned to its original site in Liverpool in June 1987.
‘Raleigh’ was made from both found and specially fabricated objects. It was Cragg's customary practice to assemble works from normally discarded objects and he requested access to the Merseyside Development Corporation's ‘artefact store’ where traditional dockside objects, reclaimed from the vicinity, await potential redeployment in the burgeoning waterside development. He selected two massive granite and two large cast-iron bollards which in the final work function as a base. The two horn-shaped forms were cast at the Bootle iron foundry of Bruce and Hyslop. According to Colin Appleton, Director of Bruce and Hyslop (conversation with the compiler, 1 February 1994), Cragg visited the foundry and drew an outline of the two horn-shaped forms in chalk on the floor of the pattern shop. Workers at the foundry then made brown paper patterns from these drawings from which they constructed skeleton patterns in plywood. These plywood patterns have been preserved by Bruce and Hyslop. The making of the patterns and the casting of the iron pieces were complex procedures which Cragg supervised, although he had little technical expertise in such matters at the time. The bell and stem parts of the two horns had to be made separately and were subsequently welded together. The horn with the large bell has a curved stem, while that with the smaller bell has a long, straight stem. Very minor work was undertaken to correct defects in the cast surface of the two horn-shaped forms but no chemical patina was applied. The cast-iron surface rusted quickly when exposed to the outside elements. Its appearance, however, has remained stable as the graphite content of iron prevents it from corroding. It is this quality that makes cast iron such a durable building material and particularly suitable for exposed coastal regions. The deep rust colour of the two horns is very similar to the rusted surface of the iron bollards, providing a dramatic contrast to the white and grey of the granite. The granite has been stained orange where water has dripped from the iron pieces. This was the first occasion on which Cragg used cast iron in his sculpture and he was inspired to do so by the widespread use of the material in the dockside area and its historical importance in the Industrial Revolution. According to Richard Francis (Tate Gallery Liverpool exh. cat., 1986, p.14), Cragg was struck by the imposing scale of the buildings in Liverpool and by the ‘archetypal forms and materials’ of the Dock.
The artist was born on Merseyside and spent part of his childhood there, although he has lived in Wuppertal, West Germany since the late 1970s and considers himself, primarily, a European. According to Richard Francis, then Curator of Tate Gallery Liverpool, Cragg ‘decided that he needed to respond to Liverpool - and his memory of it - with materials that have played a part in the construction of the place and signal also its role in the Industrial Revolution’ (ibid.). Francis goes on to clarify the artist's reasons for developing the horn or trumpet motif:
He was keen to make sculptural forms out of something which is normally regarded as utilitarian and to make a form which implies a gesture or a greeting to those who have left Liverpool or may be coming to the city. He chose the horn shapes since they imply a fanfare or a farewell and since horns (as in foghorns) are also used to send messages across water. Cragg considers that the work expresses an optimism about both the past and the future and about his perception of a renewal in Liverpool.
According to the artist, his horn-shaped forms were invented and are not based on actual foghorns or trumpets. The horn motif was first employed by Cragg in ‘Horn’, 1981 (repr. Tony Cragg: 1975–1990, exh. cat., Newport Harbor Museum, California 1990, p.68), in which found man-made objects in both natural and synthetic materials are distributed on the ground in the shape of a horn. After completing ‘Raleigh’, Cragg employed a similar horn form on a very much smaller scale in ‘Glass Horns’, 1986 (repr. British Council exh. cat., 1988, p.31), and forms relating to other musical instruments have featured in a number of works.
Published in:
Tate Gallery: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions 1986-88, London 1996 "
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