Cornelia Parker

Cold Dark Matter (1991)

To create 'Cold Dark Matter', Cornelia Parker  asked the British Army to blow up her garden shed. She then collected the debris and suspended is as part of an installation piece. She hung a light in the centre of the hanging debris to create eerie shadows on the surrounding walls.

'Cold Dark Matrer' is an astronomy term. According to Parker, it is

 'the material within the Universe that we cannot see and we cannot quantify. We know it exists but we can't measure it.'

The appearance of the shed could be seen to represent the 'Big Bang'. I think it's interesting that Cornelia Parker has chosen such an ordinary object as an old garden shed to represent such a mighty thing as the world's creation. Cornelia Parker could also being trying to show that creation is a result of destruction.

'I like to take man-made objects and push them...so that they become something else' 

30 Pieces of Silver

 I think that this is a really interesting concept for artwork. I like the idea of taking a familiar object and changing its appearance to the extent that it removes its purpose and the ability to use it. Therefore the object is being used for appearance and not for practical purposes. Furthermore if a familiar object is distorted it can have a strange impact on a person as the familiarity is almost being taken away. However the distortion of the object also makes you pay more attention to it as it has changed.

In these pieces Parker flattened discarded objects using a steam roller and then suspended them in 30 groups. Again I think that these pieces link to Cold Dark Matter as Parker is taking familiar objects and distorting them so that they are still recognisable but noticeably altered. I think that the organised way in which this piece is rearranged could suggest that Parker is trying to bring organisation to the process of destruction. There is also something quite strange about the way the objects are arranged almost as if they were on a dinner table even though they can no longer be used for their original purpose.