Cornelia Parker facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Cornelia Parker CBE RA
Parker in 2023
Born	(1956-07-14) 14 July 1956 (age 69) Cheshire, England
Education	Gloucestershire College of Art and Design Wolverhampton Polytechnic University of Reading
Known for	Conceptual art, installation art, sculpture
Notable work	Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) The Maybe (1995)

Cornelia Ann Parker (born 14 July 1956) is an English artist famous for her amazing sculptures and large-scale artworks called installation art. Installation art often uses a whole room or space to create an experience for the viewer.

Parker is known for taking everyday objects and changing them in surprising ways to make people think.

Life and Career

Cornelia Parker was born in Cheshire, England. She went to several art colleges to develop her skills, including the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design and the University of Reading.

In 1997, she was nominated for the famous Turner Prize, one of the most important awards for artists in Britain. She has also received many honors for her work and has taught at universities like the University of Manchester and the University of Oxford.

Parker’s family has an interesting history. Her mother was a German nurse during the Second World War, and her British grandfather fought in the Battle of the Somme during the First World War.

She has had major exhibitions of her art all over the world, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston in 2000, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2019, and a huge show at the Tate Britain museum in London in 2022.

Exploring Parker's Art

Parker's art is often about destroying things to create something new and beautiful. She likes to explore the hidden potential in objects, even ones that seem broken or useless.

Explosions and Charred Remains

One of her most famous pieces is Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991). For this artwork, she asked the British Army to blow up a garden shed. Then, she carefully hung all the broken pieces in a room with a single light bulb in the middle. The light created dramatic shadows on the walls, making it look like a frozen moment in time.

Later, she created Mass (Colder Darker Matter) (1997). For this piece, she used the burnt remains of a church in Texas that had been struck by lightning. She hung the charcoal pieces from the ceiling, creating a floating, dark cloud. She made a similar piece called Anti-Mass (2005) using charcoal from a church that had been destroyed by arson.

Famous Collaborations

In 1995, Parker worked with the actress Tilda Swinton on a performance piece called The Maybe. Swinton lay inside a glass case at the Serpentine Gallery in London, appearing to be asleep. Parker surrounded her with display cases holding objects that belonged to famous people from history, like Charles Dickens's pen and Queen Victoria's stocking.

Parker has also worked with historical art. In 2003, she wrapped Auguste Rodin's famous sculpture The Kiss in Tate Britain with a mile of string. She called this work The Distance (A Kiss With String Attached).

Giving New Life to Objects

Embryo Firearms, 1995. These are Colt .45 guns that were stopped in the earliest stage of being made.

Parker has an ongoing series of artworks called Avoided Object. These works use objects that have been changed in unusual ways, like being squashed, stretched, or shot. She is fascinated by cartoon-style destruction, like a character being run over by a steamroller.

One example is Embryo Firearms (1995). These are real guns that were taken from the factory before they were finished, so they look like they are in an early, "embryo" stage.

Another amazing piece is Subconscious of a Monument (2005). This artwork is made of dried clay that was removed from underneath the Leaning Tower of Pisa to stop it from falling over. Parker hung the small lumps of clay on wires from the ceiling.

Art from Surprising Materials

Parker often uses unusual materials to create her art.

• Fireworks from Space: For the opening of a sculpture park in Scotland in 2009, she created a firework display called Nocturne: A Moon Landing. She had ground up a real meteorite from the moon and mixed it into the fireworks.
• A Giant Shotgun: At the same park, she installed Landscape with Gun and Tree, a nine-metre-tall shotgun made of steel, leaning against a tree. It was inspired by a famous painting by Thomas Gainsborough.
• A Real-Life Mermaid: For the Folkestone Triennial art festival in 2011, she created The Folkestone Mermaid. Instead of an idealized fairytale character, she made a life-size sculpture of a local woman named Georgina Baker.
• The Wikipedia Embroidery: To celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, Parker created Magna Carta (An Embroidery). It is a 13-metre-long embroidery of the entire Wikipedia article about the Magna Carta. Many people helped stitch it, including prisoners, lawyers, politicians, and celebrities like Jimmy Wales (the founder of Wikipedia) and Edward Snowden.

Recent Work and Recognition

In 2016, Parker created Transitional Object (PsychoBarn) for the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It was a smaller version of the spooky house from Alfred Hitchcock's famous 1960 film Psycho, built using wood from an old red barn.

In 2017, Parker was chosen as the official artist for the UK general election, the first woman to have this role. She created films and photographs to capture the feeling of the election campaign.

Parker has won many awards for her art. In 2010, she was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts and appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 2022, she was promoted to Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for her contributions to art.

Politics

In 2015, Cornelia Parker showed her support for the Green Party's candidate Caroline Lucas during the general election in the United Kingdom.

See also

• Art of the United Kingdom
• Book Works