A Handful of Dust: The Explosive Quiet of Cornelia Parker
Considering the poetic practice of artist Cornelia Parker — listening for whispers of the past woven into the threads of British history…
Cornelia Parker is a British artist who, among other things, has worked for over four decades on examining and playing with the concept of the British Isles. In 1997, she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize for work such as her 1991 installation, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. This was a visually dramatic work in which she stocked a ‘typical garden shed’ with tools, books, children's toys, and items donated by family and friends. She then had this traditional symbol of privacy and refuge, blown up by the British Army.
The action was documented in a series of photographs and then the fragments of wood and debris were arranged and hung as they appear mid-explosion, lit by a single source at the centre that implies the trajectories with dynamic shadows. This is perhaps the first of her works to capture the attention of the wider public although she had been suspending objects in her sculptural arrangements since the 1980s.
Cornelia Parker was the official artist of the 2017 British General Election and received an OBE for services to the arts in 2010, followed by a…
