By: Samuel Lin

Cornelia Parker has produced intriguing and eye-catching pieces of art using the power of destruction. She creatively demolishes objects: flattening, crushing, deforming, or blowing them to bits. Parker’s process of destructions makes her art controversial, but arresting nevertheless.

Parker was born in Chesire, England, in 1956. As a young child, she was forced to work hard instead of playing, doing labor such as mucking out stables. She often would make works of art out of coins. Placing the coins on the railroad tracks, it would mesmerize her how the coins could be crushed and deformed into works of art by the power of destruction.

In her artwork of Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, Parker requested that the British Army blow a garden shed to bits. The shed held tools, children’s toys, some of Parker’s belongings, and other objects. Parker suspended the surviving pieces in the air to create the view of the middle of the blast, placing a single lightbulb within to illuminate the room and create interesting shadows on the wall.

Dr. Maria Balshaw, Director of the Whitworth gallery, compliments her work, saying “It blew me away . . . I had seen a lot of abstract art but this was something different – something genuinely emotional and exciting.”

To create her artwork of Thirty Pieces of Silver, Parker drove a steam roller over a silver forks plates, teacups, and other objects, then suspended them artfully and mathematically in a design a few inches from the ground.

Destruction, the theme most present in Parker’s art, is also used in other artwork. Art is, in essence, destruction and creativity. Even in the Stone Age, artists burned up animals’ skeletons and then mashed them to bits to create a black ink. In addition, the famous Il libro dell’arte (The Book of Art) makes over 200 references to the destructiveness inherent order to art making.

Sources:

Cornelia Parker Art, Bio, Ideas | TheArtStory

Cornelia Parker: The artist who likes to blow things up – BBC Culture