https://www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk/artwork/neither-nor-towards
(text from the website above): This installation features bricks from a row of houses that fell off the white cliffs of Dover. Found by the artist on a remote shoreline between Folkestone and Dover, the bricks have been shaped by the crashing waves over many years. Parker was fascinated by the drama, describing the process as a ‘perfect cartoon death’. She suspended the bricks on wires from the gallery ceiling to form a house shape. It is difficult to tell if the artist has represented the house mid-fall, or if she has undertaken a process of resurrection. Violent incidents lie at the heart of Cornelia Parker’s work. She was short listed for the Turner Prize in 1997 on the strength of installations such as ‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View’, 1991, which involved the suspension of charred remnants of a garden shed that had been blown up, at her request, by the army. Unlike ‘Cold Dark Matter’, however, the bricks that make up ‘Neither From Nor Towards’ have been shaped over years, not seconds.
Links to my own work/points of interest:
- the use of a material with a particular history/story behind it, especially this accruing of a story, and the way this physically manifests itself (the smoothing down of the bricks’ surfaces) in the material
- there is an idea of time/process wrapped up in this piece
- the ambiguity in exactly what the artist is setting out to achieve/what it is that’s being represented – down to the viewer’s discretion
- collecting/collection – something I do in my own practice but then often struggle to know what to do with what I have collected – this is a good example of an almost curatorial approach to making art
- it featured in an exhibition called ‘Tell me the story of all these things’ which in itself encapsulates a sense of what I am exploring – ‘things’ that have a suggestion of a story behind them (https://firstsite.uk/event/tell-me-the-story/)
- Instagram as a ‘political sketch’
- War Room – negatives of the poppies (significant material)
- Rodin and Duchamp favourite artists
- mile of string – reusing a material, taking it through iterations
- making works that directly reference other artists’ work – using title to make link clear
- very conversational tone
- precipitated gun – taking something back to basic, elemental makeup
- cold cure rubber? (casting material – similar to silicon?)
- Breath of a physicist – very similar to Katie Paterson? also very ‘intellectual’, based on importance of materials etc
- Magna Carta – hand embroidered wikipedia page of the Magna Carta, using lots of contributors from a vast range of backgrounds (prisoners, artists, celebrities, people of interest)
- Edward Hopper red barns – iconic (links to Hitchcock)
- Transitional Object – importance of title, can encapsulate themes/thoughts behind the piece
- curatorial work: ‘Richard of York Gave Battle in Vain’, black and white room at RA and the Foundling museum (keeping relevant and political, in reference to homelessness and the refugee crisis – ‘we still have foundlings’)
- Stolen Thunder – iterative, a sense of humour
- American Gothic – macabre, time-based work
- ‘my iPhone is my sketchbook’ – cyclical link back to Instagram
Anna Harris 