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Installation view of CORNELIA PARKER’s Subconscious of a Monument, 2001–05, earth excavated from underneath Leaning Tower of Pisa (to stop it falling), dimensions variable, at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2019. All images copyright the artist. Photo by Anna Kučera. Courtesy the artist, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Frith Street Gallery, London.
Cornelia Parker is known to explode, steam-roll, guillotine, and suspend various ordinary objects, transforming them into extraordinary and dramatic installations. However, it was a small and unassuming print that greeted visitors at the entrance of the British artist’s solo exhibition at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). Many would miss World Coming Apart at the Seams (2017), depicting the underside of an old world map held together by yellowed tape. This print is metaphoric of Parker’s desire to look beneath the surface of the everyday, revealing a world of violent tragicomedy, fragility, and flux that teeters on the edge of discomfort, chaos, and possibility. This first major survey of the artist’s ouevre in the Southern Hemisphere featured a diverse array of large-scale installations, embroideries, works on paper, videos, and smaller objects that highlighted Parker’s deft ability to communicate across multiple mediums.
The artist’s excavational approach was astutely accentuated by exposed sections of wall that intervened with the gallery architecture. These places of incision revealed two video works among the wall’s internal structure depicting a statue of Margaret Thatcher and the making of souvenir crowns of thorns. Next to one video ironically hung a First Aid Kit that would prove useless in combating the powerful forces of physical and psychological transformation referenced throughout the exhibition. While at times appearing extreme, Parker’s practice reflects the brutality that constantly surrounds us, normalized by the media and presented as entertainment in popular culture.
Many of her smaller-scale Avoided Objects overtly examine darker histories. The works disrupt the function of objects through physical intervention, drawing attention to the evaded issues they represent. This is reflected in her Bullet Drawing series (2010–19), the title of which references Parker’s process of melting down bullets and drawing them into wire. The artist then bends this material into different geometric patterns, with only the artwork’s title hinting at its latent violence. Changing the form and trajectory of these objects enables viewers to “dodge a bullet,” playing to Parker’s dark sense of humor.
Reflecting on the First World War, Parker’s large installation War Room (2015) takes a more solemn approach to conflict. A red tent of perforated negatives from remembrance poppy flowers lined gallery walls, filling the room with absence. The billowing ceiling folds appeared bodily as layers of red cardboard gently rippled in the light of four single light bulbs. The vastness of the empty space incited contemplation of the deceased soldiers represented by the absent poppies, their delicate discards evoking the tragedy of war. Only exhibited once before, in Manchester, this work holds resonance for Australian audiences who join other Commonwealth nations in annually wearing poppies to remember those who died in the line of duty.
Installation view of CORNELIA PARKER’s Bullet Drawing, 2010, lead from a bullet, melted down and drawn into wire, threaded through paper, 40 × 38 cm (drawing), 65.5 × 65.5 cm (frame), at The Whitworth, University of Manchester, 2015. Photo by Michael Pollard. Courtesy the artist; The Whitworth, University of Manchester; and Frith Street Gallery, London.
Installation view of CORNELIA PARKER’s War Room, 2015, perforated paper negatives left over from production of remembrance poppies, dimensions variable, at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2019. Photo by Anna Kučera. Courtesy the artist, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Frith Street Gallery, London.
War Room provides an introspective counterpoint to Parker’s famous installation suspending a blown-up shed. Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) marks an attempt to make sense of the intangible from a three-dimensional, diagrammatic perspective. The work focuses on the in-between space of a shed, often filled with rarely used items not quite worthy of discarding. Parker regularly refers to the metaphor of breath in her work, which encompasses a dispersing exhale and an inhale that draws matter together again. This tension between chaos and order is theatrically enacted as a suspended moment of destruction. A single lightbulb in the center of the installation cast haunting shadows of shed fragments and derelict contents across the walls. This active, tangible destruction contrasts with War Room’s sense of emptiness and loss. Through these different visual techniques, Parker highlights the precarious and ephemeral reality we inhabit.
Installation view of CORNELIA PARKER’s Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, 1991, blown up garden shed and contents, wire, light bulb, dimensions variable, at Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, 2019. Photo by Anna Kučera. Courtesy the artist, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Frith Street Gallery, London.
The British Army’s enthusiasm to explode the shed for her, and the eager crowd that gathered to watch silver-plated objects be steam-rolled for Thirty Pieces of Silver (1988–89), another major installation on display, emphasize the spectacle of these transformative processes. Parker’s actions boldly challenge the durability and status of the everyday objects around us, inviting her audience to see the world differently.
Cornelia Parker’s solo exhibition is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, until February 16, 2020.
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