Artist Spotlight: Cornelia Parker

C  o  r  n  e  l  i  a  P  a  r  k  e  r

Thirty Pieces of Silver

Cornelia Parker is a fascinating artist. Her theme throughout her work is visual and verbal allusions which helps transform regular objects into something extraordinary and fascinating. 

Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View
Blown up shed, reassembled

Parker uses a lot of suspension in her pieces. The two works above are of transformed objects that's she arranged and hung from the ceiling. The first one, Thirty Pieces of Silver, contains an arrangement of silver objects that have been flattened by a steam roller, then arranged into 30 coin shapes that seem to hover above the floor. This story of the silver is seen in the bible, when Judas accepts thirty pieces of silver as payment to betray Jesus.


In the second piece, Cold Dark Matter, Parker blows up a shed and reassembles it in the air. The effect is very dramatic, and even beautiful at the shadows cast a scary scene of a once solid shed. Now, its chaos, its even more interesting than it was before. 

Breathless

In the piece above, Parker continues to use the concept of transformation. These brass musical instruments are, in fact, flattened by the notorious steam roller. The circular pattern is then suspended higher up, so it can be viewed from above, and below. 

Cornelia Parker