Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Ann Parker (born 14 July 1956 ) is an English visual artist, best known for her sculpture and installation art.

Parker was born in 1956 in Cheshire, England.

She studied at the 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), the University of Gloucestershire (2008) and the University of Manchester (2017).

Parker is best known for large-scale installations such as Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) – first shown at the Chisenhale Gallery in Bow, East London – for which 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.

This inspired an orchestral composition of the same name by Joo Yeon Sir.

The Maybe (1995) at the Serpentine Gallery, London, was a performance piece conceived by Tilda Swinton, who lay, apparently asleep, inside a vitrine.

She asked Parker to collaborate with her on the project, and to create an installation in which she could sleep.

Swinton's original idea was to lie in state as Snow White in a glass coffin, but through the collaboration with Parker the idea evolved into her appearing as herself and not as an actor posing as a fictional character.

Parker filled the Serpentine with glass cases containing relics that belonged to famous historical figures, such as the pillow and blanket from Freud's couch, Mrs. Simpson's ice skates, Charles Dickens' quill pen and Queen Victoria's stocking.

Cartoon deaths have long held a fascination for Parker: "Tom being run over by a steamroller or Jerry riddled with bullet holes. Sometimes the object's demise has been orchestrated, or it may have occurred accidentally or by natural causes. They might be 'preempted' objects that have not yet achieved a fully formed identity, having been plucked prematurely from the production line like Embryo Firearms 1995. They may not even be classified as objects: things like cracks, creases, shadows, dust or dirt The Negative of Whispers 1997: Earplugs made with fluff gathered in the Whispering Gallery, St Paul's Cathedral). Or they might be those territories you want to avoid psychologically, such as the backs, underbellies or tarnished surfaces of things."

A version of the piece was later re-performed in Rome (1996) and then MoMA, New York (2013) without Parker's involvement.

Parker has made other interventions involving historical artworks.

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

In contrast, in 1997 at the Turner Prize exhibition, Parker exhibited Mass (Colder Darker Matter) (1997), suspending the charred remains of a church that had been struck by lightning in Texas.

Another example of this work is Pornographic Drawings (1997), using ink made by the artist who used solvent to dissolve (pornographic) video tape, confiscated by HM Customs and Excise.

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.

Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson) (1999) is another example of Parker's suspended sculptures, featuring charred remains of an actual case of suspected arson.

Cornelia Parker's first solo museum exhibition was at the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston in 2000.

A survey exhibition of her work opened at Tate Britain in May 2022.

For example, she wrapped Rodin's The Kiss sculpture in Tate Britain with a mile of string (2003) as her contribution to the 2003 Tate Triennial Days Like These at Tate Britain.

Eight years later, Parker made a companion piece "Anti-Mass" (2005), using charcoal from a black congregation church in Kentucky, which had been destroyed by arson.

Subconscious of a Monument (2005) is composed of fragments of dry soil, which are suspended on wires from the gallery ceiling.

These lumps are the now-desiccated clay which was removed from beneath the Leaning Tower of Pisa in order to prevent its collapse.

Avoided Object is an ongoing series of smaller works which have been developed in liaison with various institutions, including the Royal Armouries, British Police Forces and Madame Tussauds.

These "avoided" objects have often had their identities transformed by being burned, shot, squashed, stretched, drawn, exploded, cut, or simply dropped off cliffs.

In 2009, for the opening of Jupiter Artland, a sculpture park near Edinburgh, Parker created a firework display titled Nocturne: A Moon Landing containing a lunar meteorite.

Therefore, the moon "landed on Jupiter".

The following year Parker made Landscape with Gun and Tree for Jupiter Artland, a nine-metre-tall cast iron and Corten steel shotgun leaning against a tree.

It was inspired by the painting Mr and Mrs Andrews by Thomas Gainsborough, where Mr Andrews poses with a gun slung over his arm.

The shotgun used in the piece is a facsimile of the one owned by Robert Wilson, one of the founders of Jupiter Artland.

For the Folkestone Triennial in 2011, Parker created a Folkestone version of one of the popular tourist attractions in Copenhagen, Little Mermaid.

Through a process of open submission, Parker chose Georgina Baker, mother of two and Folkestone born and bred.

The intervention was titled The Distance (A Kiss With String Attached). She re-staged this intervention as part of her mid-career retrospective at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, in 2015.

Parker is currently Honorary Professor at the University of Manchester and between 2016 and 2019 was Visiting Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall Oxford.

She was appointed Honorary Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 2020.

Parker has one daughter, and lives and works in London.

Parker's mother was German and was a nurse in the Luftwaffe during the Second World War.

Her British grandfather fought in the Battle of the Somme in the First World War.