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Stephen Cripps

Drawings and sketches are at the core of our Stephen Cripps (1952-82) collection, whose experimental sculpture and performance combined found objects, sound and explosives.

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About the artist

The Archive of British sculptor and performance artist Stephen Cripps (1952-82) offers a fascinating insight into his artistic practice in performance-based and transitory works. Cripps utilised a heady mixture of automotive sculptures made from found objects, urban sounds and explosives.

His work was exceptionally experimental, dynamic, energetic, imaginative and continually pushing boundaries; these unique combinations resulted in a spectacular assault on the senses of all present. He produced a powerful body of work throughout the mid-late 1970s until his untimely death in 1982.

His earliest performance sculptures include ‘Spills and Thrills’ (Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, 1974), ‘Machine Dances’ (Bath and Tufnell Park Community Festivals, 1974-76) and ‘Machine for Birds’ (Serpentine Gallery, Summer Show III, 1975). Between 1975 and 1979, he rented a studio at D6 Butler’s Wharf, London (1975-79) where he lived, worked and stored salvaged objects for his constructions.

Cripps had three solo exhibitions at The Acme Gallery, London (1978, 1980 and 1981), designed sets for theatre productions of ‘Agamemnon’ and ‘Metamorphosis’ by Stephen Berkoff and staged numerous performances in Europe and the United States (1974-82). After his first Acme Gallery exhibition, he increasingly collaborated with musicians and others artists, including the percussionist Paul Burwell in a pyrotechnic performance at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford in 1979.

What’s in the collection?

Cripps’ drawings and sketches are at the core of the collection, giving an insight into his creative processes and a huge depth of background detail to works which may have resulted in just a few seconds of performance.

The archive also includes film and audio records which he incorporated into his work, which have not been heard or seen since the works were made in the 1970s. Correspondence, papers and photographs provide information about his commissions and work with a variety of galleries.

Also included are papers relating to his training as a fireman with the Greater London Fire Brigade, which he joined in 1979. The archive also documents his studio at Butler’s Wharf in a series of photographs, which was overflowing with a variety of found objects and scrap, from a fighter plane cockpit to a collection of gongs, all of which were potential elements of his work.