Cornelia Parker
Anti Mass, 2005
detail of anti mass, 2005
Cornelia Parker, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991
Cornelia Parker was born in Cheshire in I956 and lives and works in London. She is interested in how everyday objects can be changed by (often violent) processes. During her career she has used a steamroller to flatten silver plates and has transformed a wedding ring into metres of fine, gold thread. Although at first glance it might seem that she is interested in destroying objects, she is in fact fascinated by how change can create something completely new.
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 under very controlled conditions. 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 centre of the arrangement, casting shadows on the walls. The title gives us a whole new way of understanding the artwork, making us think of other dramatic moments of destruction and creation in the much wider universe.
'Cold dark matter' is a scientific term used to describe the substance that exists in the universe, yet remains mysterious and unquantifiable.
Mass (Cold Darker Matter) Presented as her featured work in the 1997 Turner Prize Exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London, this installation is constructed from the charred remains of a Texas church that was struck by lightning.
The artist had arrived in Texas for her Spring 1997 residency at ArtPace in San Antonio when she heard about an electrical storm that had destroyed a wooden church. "I went down and asked the Baptist minister if I could have the charcoal to make a charcoal drawing - which is what I consider this to be," she told the critic Louisa Buck. "I like the way that all the emotion of religion and the drama of lighting can be distilled into a very simple, quiet piece where all I'm doing is presenting the charcoal..."
Neither From Nor Towards, 1992,
Cornelia Parker, Arts Council Collection, Hayward Gallery, London.
In 'Neither From Nor Towards' the brick remnants of an eroded house hang suspended in stilled animation in
the work of British artist Cornelia Parker, who was nominated for the Turner prize in 1997. Her work often depicts a moment in time, which has been halted. In 'Neither From Nor Towards', the bricks are resonant with their previous life, reminding us of the passage of time over which we have no control. Parker rescues and reinterprets the ordinary, which is transformed by the gallery setting into something poetic and extraordinary.
Other works by Parker
30 Pieces of Silver
Breathless, 2001