So, part two of the Cornelia Parker show at Tate Britain begins with another installation: Perpetual Canon. Parker was invited to create a piece for a circular space and thought of music. This evolved into a lack of sound, a “mute marching band, frozen breathlessly in limbo”.
While the brass instruments are squashed, their shadows live as almost playable silhouettes on the surrounding walls. I matched my shadow to play one.
It’s this fascination with how a piece affects the space around it that I find so compelling, something I have returned to in my current mobile sculptures (that will be for another post).
Returning to an intimate scale, here is a series of Stolen Thunder cloths. I have to use Parker’s words again for this:
While cleaning silver, I looked at the marks on the polishing cloth and thought, ‘These could be drawings’. The phrase ‘tarnished reputations’ came into mind. From this came an idea to create a kind of rogues’ gallery of famous people’s silver. I would leave with a grimy trophy, stealing their thunder and their fame.”
Artefacts include the inside of Henry VIII’s armour & Davey Crockett’s fork amongst others.
We know who we are We know what you have done consists of two small medals and was part of a project to produce a “Medal of Dishonour” for an exhibition at the British Museum.
Both sides are the same: heads only, no tails and are modelled on Tony Blair and George W Bush, leaders who led the invasion of Iraq in 2003. As the caption says “they stand in for any faceless politician or bureaucrat, any man in a suit, corrupted by power”
My final pictures are of an installation, Island, made for this show. It’s very much a post-Brexit sculpture, with chalk from the White Cliffs of Dover and original Pugin-designed floor tiles reclaimed from the Palace of Westminster
This is only a small selection of what is on display and I haven’t even included the films. I’ll definitely be going back for another look.
