Cornelia Parker’s artwork exhibition to open at Tate Britain
The first major exhibition of Cornelia Parker’s artworks in London is set to open at Tate Britain from May.
One of Britain’s leading contemporary artists, Ms Parker is responsible for some of the most unique and unforgettable artworks of the past thirty years.
Driven by curiosity, Ms Parker transforms seemingly everyday objects into extraordinary works of art.
Through visual allusions and metaphors, her works explore contemporary issues such as violence, human rights and environmental disaster.
The exhibition will bring together over 90 artworks spanning immersive installations, sculptures, film, photography and drawing, to celebrate the breadth of Parker’s highly experimental and wide-ranging career to date, including two new works shown for the first time.
Ms Parker first came to prominence in the late 1980s creating large-scale suspended installations and sculptures which have captivated audiences around the world ever since.
This exhibition will include several of her best-known early works including Thirty Pieces of Silver 1988-89, an installation of flattened silver objects including teapots, candle sticks and dinnerware collected from charity shops and car boot sales; and Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View 1991, a garden shed frozen at the moment of explosion, its fragments surrounding a single lightbulb.
Examples of Parker’s more recent room-sized works will be included, such as War Room 2015, created from the reams of perforated red paper negatives left over from the production of British Legion remembrance poppies, and Magna Carta (An Embroidery) 2015, a thirteen-metre long collectively hand-sewn embroidery of a Wikipedia page, which involved over 250 volunteers including public figures, human rights lawyers, politicians and prisoners.
The exhibition will spotlight Ms Parker’s hugely inventive works on paper, including drawings, photographs and prints, as well as her more intimate sculptural objects.
Highlights include the Avoided Object 1999 photographs of clouds, taken on a camera once owned by an Auschwitz commandant and the inkblot Pornographic Drawings 1995-2006, created from dissolved video tapes confiscated by HM Customs and Excise.
Several of Parker’s artworks including sculptures, textile-based works and video, will spill out beyond the confines of the exhibition and into Tate Britain’s collection galleries, presented alongside the historical works they reference.
Room for Margins 1998, an installation of the stained canvas linings and tacking edges of Turner paintings (removed by Tate conservators after a flood in 1928) will be hung in the dedicated Turner galleries at Tate Britain.
The Distance (A Kiss with String Attached), 2003, Parker’s provocative dialogue with Rodin’s famous Kiss, will greet visitors on arrival at the Millbank entrance.
Cornelia Parker is at Tate Britain from may 18 to October 16, 2022.
Main Picture: Cornelia Parker, studio, London, 2013