Research the work of Cornelia Parker. Make notes in your own words in response to the following:

• What do you think Parker is trying to do in her piece Poison and Antidote Drawing (2010)?
• Poison and Antidote Drawing is created using rattlesnake venom and black ink, anti-venom and white ink. Parker often uses bits of her subject to make her artwork. Why do you think she does this?
• How do you think it feels to stand in the presence of artworks that are constructed from original objects of great cultural significance? How does that differ from, say, standing in front of a painting of the same object?

By researching the work of Cornelia Parker and understanding the connection between her subjects and the materials she is using, I have gained a whole new appreciation for her work.

In her piece “Poison and Antidote Drawing” mentioned in the course manual, she used rattle snake poison in black ink and an antidote in white ink in a drawing that was folded in the middle in order to create identical impression of abstract shapes on either side of the crease.

(Image from: Trustees of the british museum. 2019. British Museum Image Gallery. [Online]. [30 March 2020]. Available from: https://research.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details/collection_image_gallery.aspx?assetId=454763001&objectId=691360&partId=1)

This mirror drawing is an image of duality, and it pushes the duality of concepts like black and white, poison or antidote to literally a question of life and death by the qualities of the materials.

So the materials used and the process become the work- this is what characterizes Cornelia Parker’s art.

In the movie ” Cornelia Parker – What Do Artists Do All Day ?”, available on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuAF55BN-Ak), Parker said “The material is important, the process is important- the combination of those two things together make the work”.

Rattlesnake venom is maybe not the most common commodity, but often Parker uses familiar every day objects that she transforms into her work. In the above movie, we see Parker driving around London and photographing a withered road sign and cracks in the pavement.

She took rubber molds of the pavement cracks and then had them cast in bronze- elevating them to something really extraordinary.

In Cornelia Parker’s probably most well known work, “Cold dark matter” from 1991, she asked the British army to blow up a garden shed.

A shed is a very familiar thing, and a place where often very personal items are stored- items that are not in use but too good to get rid of. It seems to be incongruous with the violence of an explosion. Explosions are such a common sight in comics or news or at the time bombings in major cities, so this was a very unsettling way of bringing that violence close to home, to the familiar.

(Image from: Tate. 2020. Tateorguk. [Online]. [30 March 2020]. Available from: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/parker-cold-dark-matter-an-exploded-view-t06949/story-cold-dark-matter)

This work looks really impressive on photographs, the blown up pieces of the shed hanging on transparent strings from the ceiling and lit up so they are casting strong shadows around. I can imagine the impact being even stronger in the flesh. By hanging the pieces instead of laying them on the floor, it seems like they are suspended in time and space- still in the middle of the explosion.  This hanging of objects in different groups is recurring in Parker’s work. It creates an interesting tension in the space around the objects too, and for someone seeing the installation in the flesh, an interesting blurring of the line between work and spectator.

In another body of work, Parker is “drawing” by puncturing holes in the grids used as targets while shooting and then stitching with a wire made of melted down bullets literally drawn into a wire. Like this, she uses bullets, with their violent energy and potential for death, to draw something formal and considered.

I am fascinated by how Parker uses bits of her subject to make her artwork. This is not an aspect I have considered in my own making before and it will be interesting to consider for the upcoming assignment.