CORNELIA PARKER

About

Parker's compelling transformations of familiar, everyday objects investigate the nature of matter, test physical properties and play on private and public meaning and value. Using materials that have a history loaded with association, a feather from Sigmund Freud's pillow for example, Parker has employed numerous methods of exploration — suspending, exploding, crushing, stretching objects and even language through her titles — transporting them to a realm between two states. A highlight of the exhibition will be Parker's Perpetual Canon 2004. Shown in the UK for the first time, the installation consists of 60 silver-plated instruments from a marching band that have been squashed and suspended in midair. The title of the work is a musical term to describing a ‘round', the repetition of a phrase again and again. The instruments robbed of their third dimension have a cartoon like quality, appearing as if they have inhaled, but not exhaled, a catastrophe frozen and forever silenced. Lit from the light of a single bulb, a cacophony of shadows replace the sound, both amplifying and containing the instruments, the shadows of the viewers replacing the absent players.