Cornelia Parker

"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"-Parker

Bio/Background:-Is an English sculptor and installation artist (also does drawings, photographs, and video)

-Born 1956 in Cheshire, England (53 yrs old)

-studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design (1974-75) and Wolverhapton Polytechnic (1975-78.)

-Received her MFA from Reading University in 1982 -Married to American Artist Jeff McMillan and has a 7 year old daughter, Lily.

-Received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wolverhampton in 2000 and from the University of Birmingham in 2005.

-Currently a professor of conceptual at at the European Graduate school.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3KQ4IJWKXU&feature=related  

 

"Cornelia Parker first came to public attention in 1988 by arranging for a steamroller to level a scavenged collection of silver objects to create the raw materials for a large-scale sculpture. Since then, melting, slicing, crushing, shooting, and exploding objects (with the assistance of the Royal Mint, Colt Firearms, and the British Army) and recycling the results into eloquently arranged installations has become the trademark of Parker's creative process."

- Artforum International   | April 1, 2000| Miller, Francine Koslow  "Cornelia Parker's photographs do not rely on fixed meaning. She seeks to realize the metaphorical poetry contained in science's rational analyses, rather than to illustrate a scientific concept. Her 'Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View' revolves around themes of gathering and dispersal, expansion and contraction, transformation and stasis, making and breaking and other contrasts. It exemplifies the very wide reach of her associative creations."-Kemp, Martin

• Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991

• A garden shed and contents blown up

• Dimensions variable

Cold Dark Matter is an installation by Cornelia Parker Cold Dark Matter began life as a garden shed filled with objects from her own and friends' sheds and things bought at a car boot sale. She then asked the army to blow up the shed. The objects, along with the fragments of the shed, were collected and suspended in a closed room in an attempt to recreate the moment just after the explosion. The installation is lit with a single light-bulb at the very center of the arrangement,casting shadows on the walls around the work.      

• Hanging Fire Suspected Arson, 1999

• Charcoal, wire, pins, nails

• Length: 140 cm Width: 84 cm Height: 220 cm

Parker retrieved the charred remains of a black Baptist church, destroyed by arson and arranged the pieces, strung them on wires and hung them in a rectilinear arrangement.

• Blue Shift, 2001• Nightgown worn by

Mia Farrow in the Roman Polanski film 'Rosemary's Baby', lightbox

• 166.5 x 82 x 46cm

What the hell is a

lightbox ?!?!

B.) In photography a lightbox has2 main applications. One is a container with several light-bulbs and a pane of frosted glass on the top. It is used by photography professionals viewing translucent films, such as slides.

A.) Another use of the term "lightbox" is for the fabric reflectors that attach to studio lighting via a connector to create soft lighting by diffusing the strobe flash. They generally come in various rectangle shapes, although recently they are being manufactured in an octagon shape. Interior reflectors can be white, silver or gold to alter the temperature of light.

• Alter Ego, 2004• Silver plated objects, wire

Mass (Colder Darker Matter), 1997, Charcoal retrieved from a church struck by lightning with thanks to the Baptist Church of Lytle, Texas, approximately 156 x 126 x 126 inches

• Perpetual Canon, 2004• Flattened brass band instruments suspended• Dimensions variable

• The Maybe, 1995

• Installation at the Serpentine Gallery, London 

• The Maybe, an exhibition made in collaboration with the actress Tilda Swinton (b. 1960) in 1995 (London, Serpentine Gal.) focused on the impressions that one has when confronted with the belongings of famous people.

• The Distance (A Kiss with String Attached), 2003

• Installation at Tate Britian, London

Rodin's The Kiss wrapped in a mile of string.

• Marks made by Freud, Subconsciously, 2000

• Macrophotograph of the Seat of Freud's Chair

• 63 x 63 cm

Macro photography -the image projected on the "film plane" is close to the same size as the subject. On a 35 mm film (for example), the lens is typically optimized to focus sharply on a small area approaching the size of the film frame.

• Pornographic Drawing, 1997

• Ink made from dissolving video tape (confiscated by HM Customs & Excise) in solvent

• 61 x 61 cm

Poison and Antidote Drawing, 2005 *Black ink with snake venom, white ink with antivenom on paper

Parker has always had an apocalyptic vision. “I suppose I have always been alert to the fragility of the world, and I have always been interested in addressing our fears of destruction,” she says. “I used to be pretty obsessed about the planet being

obliterated by a meteor until global warming came along.

When Chomsky couldn't come, she compromised and asked for an interview. “I wanted to do something very minimal: to include just him. And I wanted it to be as open to interpretation as possible, so I took all my questions out and just left his answers.” This is the film that she now presents at the Whitechapel.

"Chomskian Abstract" 2007

http://www.screencast.com/t/YWQ4NDUwNGY

Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher,[2][3][4] cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer

"You make an open-ended proposition and the audience completes it somehow. That's what you hope an artwork to be – a constantly living thing."

"I don't want it all to be pretty – it's a combination of loss and gain. Things are born, live and hang in limbo. That's what life's about..."

"If I'm not doing the work I want, I usually suffer a psychological allergic reaction and get ill. It niggles when things get out of my control."

"Once I started reinventing for myself what being an artist was – not going into a studio, but making things on my own terms in response to being out in the world – I started to really enjoy it... I realized that everything else for me was hell."

Parker on her art and being an artist...

"I like the life/death resurrection bit, which is very Catholic, something dies, but it's resurrected in another form."

Exhibits and ShowsParker 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)...

Feather that went to the Top of Everest 1997 (photogramme) 15.7"X12"

...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.

Relatedness to other artists...Damian Ortega

...Warhol

...Kumi Yamashita

“For some years Cornelia Parker's work has been concerned with formalizing things beyond our control. In containing the volatile and making it into something that is quiet and contemplative like the 'eye of the storm'.

Through a combination of visual and verbal allusions, her work triggers cultural metaphors and personal associations, allowing the viewer to witness the transformation of the most ordinary objects into something compelling and extraordinary.”

-Arts and Ecology

Some final thoughts…