Support Bubble, Bronze, 64 x 22 x 26 cm, 2020, £4,850 
Ups and Downs, Bronze, Edition 1/6, 15 x 37 x 14 cm, 2021, £2,200
Craig Hudson is an urban artist making work that seems incredibly streetwise in a study that is, by stark contrast, a pastoral dream in the remount Butley Mills, on an estuary in Suffolk. Hudson went to art school as an adult where he initially worked as a painter until a tutor challenged him to make sculpture, his willingness to move between disciplines and combine unlikely processes and materials remains a distinguishing feature of his work.
Much of Hudson’s work is cast in bronze, from elements modelled in clay or fluid shapes fashioned from expanding foam, others cast directly from real objects, such as the artists hands or shoes, a real balloon or beach ball. A balloon is such a temporary delight, taught and fragile, always seemingly about to pop. Here, it is remade in bronze, the material of durability and longevity, to stay aloft forever.
The final impression of Craig’s work is that the figure is a mess in contrast to the shining coloured object it posses; bleeding pigment emblematic of a form of internal, psychological falling apart- or dragging its oversized hands or shoes evoking a sense of heaviness and struggle. The work is bound up in this sense of contrast; internal fragility and a hardened exterior represented not only by the use of bronze, but textures, colours and the presence of objects such as the reoccurring balloon.