Cornelia Parker

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cornelia Parker (born 1956) is an English sculptor and installation artist. She is generally associated with Britart.

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, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton in 2000.

In 1997, she was a Turner Prize nominee.

She engages in intervention with site-specific work, one example in 2003 being the wrapping of Rodin's The Kiss sculpture in Tate Britain with a mile of string. This offended many people, one of whom, Stuckist artist, Piers Butler, cut the string, while pre-arranged couples kissed in the vicinity.^[1]

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.

She is best known for large-scale installations. Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) consists of a wooden shed which she had blown up by soldiers. She then arranged the fragments of wood in a large room, as if in the process of being blown through the air. In the centre was a light which cast the shadows of the wood dramatically on the walls of the room.^[2]

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.

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]