Cornelia Parker
Cornelia Parker (born 1956) is an English sculptor and installation artist.
She was born in Cheshire; she studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design (1974-75) and Wolverhampton Polytechnic (1975-78). She received her MFA from Reading University in 1982, an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton in 2000 and the University of Birmingham (2005)..
In 1997, she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize.
She engages in intervention with site-specific work, and is best known for large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), where she had a garden shed blown up by the British Army and suspended the fragments as if suspending the explosion process in time. In the centre was a light which cast the shadows of the wood dramatically on the walls of the room.[1]
The Maybe (1995) at the Serpentine Gallery was a collaboration with actress Tilda Swinton, who lay, apparently asleep, inside a vitrine, while members of the public looked at her.
Another example being the wrapping of Rodin's The Kiss sculpture in Tate Britain with a mile of string (2003). The Stuckist artist, Piers Butler, cut the string, while pre-arranged couples kissed in the vicinity.[2]
She has also been criticised (as has the Tate Gallery) for her use of pieces of J.M.W. Turner's lining canvas for her work.
Avoided Object is the title of a series of smaller works, which have been developed in liaison with various institutions, including The Royal Amouries and Madame Tussauds. An example of this work is Pornographic Drawings (1997), which consists of drawings made from ink which has been manufactured by using solvent to dissolve (pornographic) video tape confiscated by H.M. Customs and Excise.[3]
I resurrect things that have been killed off... My work is all about the potential of materials - even when it looks like they've lost all possibilities.[3]
On 13 February 2008 a new exhibition by Parker opened at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, England, organised in partnership with Friends of the Earth. Parker’s latest work is a 40 minute film - Chomskian Abstract, 2007 - presenting her interview with the world-renowned writer and theorist Noam Chomsky. Alongside Chomskian Abstract, 2007, Parker’s Poison and Antidote Drawings, 2004 featured black ink containing snake venom and white ink containing anti venom. The format of the drawings reflects the question and answer format of the interview with Chomsky.
Parker lives and works in London. She has had major solo shows at the Serpentine Gallery, London (1998), and Deitch Projects, New York (1998), ICA Boston (2000), the Galeria Civica de Arte Moderne in Turin (2001), the Kunsteverein in Stuttgart (2004) and the Modern Museum at Fort Worth, Texas (2006). She is represented by Frith Street Gallery (London), D’Amelio Terras (New York), Guy Bartschi (Geneva), and Galeria Carles Tache (Barcelona). Her work is in private collections worldwide, besides many public collections, including MOMA (New York), the Tate Gallery, the British Council, Henry Moore Foundation, De Young Museum (San Francisco) and the Yale Center for British Art.
External links
- Frith Street Gallery: Cornelia Parker
- Tate: Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991)
- Interview (02/2008)
See also
References
- ^ "Cold Dark Matter:an Exploded View" Tate Gallery interactive site Retrieved March 20, 2006
- ^ "A Stuckist on Stuckism" by Charles Thomson Retrieved March 20, 2006
- ^ a b artseensoho.com Retrieved March 20, 2006