Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Ann Parker (* 1956 in Cheshire , United Kingdom ) is an English sculptor and installation artist.

life and career

Cornelia Parker 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 Honorary Doctorates from the University of Wolverhampton in 2000, the University of Birmingham (2005) and the University of Gloucestershire (2008).

In 1997, Cornelia Parker was shortlisted for the Turner Prize, along with Christine Borland, Angela Bulloch and Gillian Wearing (who won the prize).

She is known for large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991), where she had a garden blown up by the British Army and arranged the fragments in a sort of snapshot of the explosion. A light was installed in the center, which dramatically threw the shadows of the wood onto the walls of the room.

Parker's convincing implementations of familiar, everyday objects examine the nature of matter, test physical properties and play with private and public opinions and values. Parker used numerous methods, such as exploding, squeezing, and stretching, in order to express her art with materials that are laden with historical associations, such as a feather from Sigmund Freud's pillow.

The Maybe (1995) in the Serpentine Gallery was a collaboration with the actress Tilda Swinton , who, apparently asleep, lay inside a showcase. It was surrounded by other display cases with relics from famous historical figures, such as Mrs. Simpsons skates, Charles Dickens quill pen and Queen Victoria's tights.

She also performed other interventions with historical art objects. For example, as her contribution to Tate Triennial Days Like These, she wrapped Rodin's sculpture The Kiss in Tate Britain with a mile of string (2003). This intervention was exhibited under the title The Distance (A Kiss with String Attached).

Avoided Object is an ongoing series of smaller works developed in collaboration with various institutions including the Royal Armories Museum (Leeds) and Madame Tussauds . These objects have been stripped of their true identity by being burned, shot, squeezed, stretched, pulled, blown up or simply thrown off a cliff. Cornelia Parker has long been fascinated by fatalities in cartoon series: Tom being run over by a steamroller or Jerry riddled with bullet holes. The death of some objects is simply staged, or it has its causes in accidents or through simple, natural circumstances.

Another example of this work is Pornographic Drawings (1997), which consists of several ink drawings that were made from (pornographic) video tapes confiscated by the customs office using solvents.

"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."

On February 13, 2008, a new exhibition by Cornelia Parker opened at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London , organized in collaboration with Friends of the Earth . It includes a 40-minute film - Chomskian Abstract , 2007 - showing her interview with world-famous writer and theorist Noam Chomsky . The exhibition also includes Parker's Poison and Antidote drawings (2004), the black ink of which contains snake venom and the white ink the corresponding antidote.

Cornelia Parker lives and works in London . Her work was included in the 16th Sydney Biennale and the 8th Sharjah Biennale in 2008. She had major solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Gallery , London (1998), Deitch Projects , New York (1998), ICA Boston (2000), the Galeria de Arte Moderne Civica in Turin (2001), at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart (2004), the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth , Texas (2006), Ikon Gallery , Birmingham (2007), the Museo de Arte de Lima , Peru (2008) and the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art , Gateshead , Great Britain (2010).

It is represented by Frith Street Gallery ( London ), D'Amelio Terras ( New York ), Guy Bärtschi ( Geneva ), and Galeria Carles Tache ( Barcelona ).

Her work can be found next to the major public exhibitions, such as at the MOMA (New York), the Tate Gallery , the British Council, Henry Moore Foundation , MH de Young Memorial Museum ( San Francisco ) and the Yale Center for British Art , too in private collections worldwide.

credentials

1. ↑ Cold Dark Matter: an Exploded View. ( English ) Tate Gallery . Retrieved December 25, 2010.
2. ↑ James Fenton: No strings attached . In: The Guardian . Guardian News and Media . March 8, 2003. Retrieved December 25, 2010.
3. ^ Cornelia Parker at Deitch Projects. ( English ) ARTseenSOHO. Retrieved December 25, 2010.
4. ^ RJ Preece: Cornelia Parker in the Serpentine Gallery . In: World Sculpture News / artdesigncafe . 1998. Retrieved December 25, 2010.

Web links

Commons : Cornelia Parker  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Firth Street Gallery: Cornelia Parker
• Cornelia Parker editions at Alan Cristea Gallery
• Tate: Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991)
• Apocalypse later The Guardian Interview. February 12, 2008