Cornelia Parker: surreal terrorist, mad scientist and alchemist

In 1997 Cornelia Parker was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. Despite her status as one of the movers and shakers of the BritArt scene, unlike some of her contemporaries, she was taught at Wolverhampton Poly and has never been collected by Saatchi.

Cornelia Parker is best known for her large scale installations such as, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, made up of the splintered debris of a bomb-exploded shed, reconstructed around a central hanging light bulb; and Thirty Pieces of Silver, consisting of tons of silverware steamrollered into thirty, giant, flat circles suspended in perfect symmetry. She is also known for having collaborated with actress Tilda Swinton on The Maybe at the Serpentine Gallery and for having wrapped Rodin’s The Kiss up in string at the Tate.

She has been described as a surreal terrorist, a mad scientists and an alchemist. She became a mother at the age of 44, counts Charlie Chaplin amongst her heroes, reads Noam Chomsky and appreciates that George Orwell is funny.

Comedian Sam Stone went to visit her on the roof terrace of her home in London, on the eve of her birthday, to talk about dust, string, vertigo, split ends and Duchamps, among other things.

The first time I saw you Cornelia, you were on your hands and knees in the whispering gallery of St Paul’s Cathedral, very carefully brushing dust into a small jar, like an archaeologist uncovering an ancient relic.

I was on my hands and knees because I am afraid of heights! I was up there with Rebecca Stephens who was the first woman to climb Everest. I was making a piece of work to do with altitude and climbing. I asked Rebecca for a feather from the lining of her jacket and I made a photogram of it. Do you know more feathers have been to the top of Everest than people? Which is funny, because birds can’t even fly that high. But when I was on the floor of the whispering gallery, I noticed all this dust and fluff.

And what did you do with all that dust and fluff, Cornelia?

I made some earplugs. I told Rebecca she had to wear them the next time she climbed one of her seven peaks, to help prevent her ears popping from the altitude.

I think that the idea of making earplugs from the gathered dust of muffled whispers is so poetic. I also think, ‘You’re nuts’

I think I’ve always been thought of as nuts. When I was a child I was called ‘nuts’.

And it doesn’t bother you?

Er no. I most probably made it into a virtue. In a way, the wonderful thing about making art is it’s permission to be free and if you care too much what people think, you’re not free.

Like when you wrapped Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’ up in bondage with string?

A few critics vilified me for that, for ‘violating’ Rodin’s work. People are entitled to their opinions as long as they don’t attack me in the street… Because someone did attack the piece of work with a pair of scissors. He violated my string!

I understand the Tate wanted to prosecute the man for cutting your string?

Yes. The police said “But the artwork wasn’t damaged.” And the Tate said “No. Rodin’s wasn’t damaged, but Cornelia’s was.” And the police said, “We can’t take this to court. How can we defend a piece of string?”

That’s quite abstract for the Police. While we are on the subject of string, I’ve noticed that you like measuring things. Does size matter?

Well, the other reason for being at St Paul’s was to demonstrate the scale of Everest, like they do in old encyclopaedias, by taking something big that is manmade and measuring it against something really big that is made by nature. I like using cultural things to try to measure more unfathomable things, like measuring Niagara with a teaspoon, as if you were trying to ladle out a waterfall. I actually had a teaspoon melted down and made into a wire the height of Niagara Falls.

That reminds me of another piece of yours. Didn’t you have a silversmith make a thin wire out of a wedding ring?

It was two wedding rings actually that I bought from a pawnshop, obviously from a marriage that had failed and so I made them into a drawing, which was called the ‘Circumference of a Living Room’. I’ve melted down various objects over the years. I did a piece called ‘Measuring Liberty with a Dollar,’ i.e.: the Statue of Liberty. I had the dollar drawn into wire because the process of making wire is called ‘drawing’ and so it was almost like making a pun on the word. The ‘line’ from a line drawing becomes a physical object and because I have suspended lots of things from wires in my time I quite liked making the object into the wire.

So the object vanishes into itself?

Yes

One for the police perhaps. As for ‘Measuring Liberty with a Dollar’- were you making a political statement?

I like the play on words more than anything.

Are you a political animal?

I quite like to be ‘slippery’ and ‘open to interpretation’ but I think just being an artist is a political act in itself.

Especially for a woman would you say?

Mmmm … perhaps. Now, of course, women in art haven’t got any complaints. I have never felt beleaguered as a female artist, not for a millisecond.

You became quite famous after your nomination for the Turner Prize. For a woman to become successful in her forties in any other field would be quite unusual. Do you feel blessed, sister?

There are so many great artists in Britain now and it’s not such a male preserve. So many museums and galleries are run by women now. I have never been overly feminist or anything, but I most probably am a feminist just because I am doing what I am doing.

Some people’s interpretation of the word ‘feminist’ can back you into a corner. Would you agree?

I always try to avoid labels. That’s what I mean about being ‘slippery’. I don’t want to give my work a narrow agenda.

I have in my memory a photograph of you throwing the word ‘gravity’ off the edge of a cliff. Was that just a play on words too?

I threw several different words. What you don’t see in that photograph is I’ve got a rope tied around my waist because of my fear of heights! I took both definitions of the word ‘gravity’- one to do with the pull to the centre of the earth and the other to do with seriousness and threw them both over and real gravity re-sculpted the words. They were unrecognisable after the fall. Again, it’s nature versus culture.

There seems to be a lot of destruction in your work. You’re not afraid of the Dark Side are you?

No. A lot of it is based on comedy though.

That’s why I’m drawn to it. It’s real ‘Roadrunner’ stuff.

I love all that. Where he falls off a cliff and stands in the air or Tom runs over Jerry with a steamroller.

So a lot of your work is a series of cartoon deaths?

Indeed. You can find darkness even in children’s fairytales. Children are obsessed with that sort of stuff. My favourite form of comedy is tragic-comedy.

Can they be separated? As Robin Williams says, “Comedy is to Tragedy as Clowns are to Birthdays”

True. True

For me as a stand-up comic, whenever I have an idea all I have to do is write it down and perform it, but you have to ask the army to blow things up or talk to NASA about sending a bit of meteorite back into space.

Most recently I’ve been trying to get the Greater London Arts Council and City Hall to let me put some hair from each of the Bronte sisters into the ‘stone hair’ of the newly restored Nelson’s Column. The Brontes are iconic and have become part of a mythology and I’ve tried to find the underbelly of a cliché. I’ve been looking at the Brontes’ split-ends under a microscope. Well actually, Anne and Emily have got them but I can’t find any in Charlotte’s.

Perhaps she was too fastidious.

Whereas Emily was quite wild and not known for keeping up her looks. I loved looking at these split ends. It’s so human and poignant. So one of the things I wanted to do was impregnate this huge statue of Nelson with this feminine DNA. I felt I should give them a ride on Nelson’s shoulders.

And are they going to let you give Nelson hair extensions?

Basically, no. The reason they gave was time constraints. I think it’s more to do with these Bronte hairs, you know this female DNA, might bring down this hero.

Do you think there’s an element of them thinking, ‘you’re just a crackpot?’

Well, no … they did give it serious consideration but I think they can foresee a lot of backlash. They don’t want any disputes. The column is associated with male pride but also quite right-wing groups. The BNP, for example are into Nelson in a big way. But I am still thinking of sending a mountaineer to shin-up there and do it illegally or train a carrier pigeon to do it. Or a monkey. That’s what I’d love to do.

So there is a little of the Anarchist in you?

Well, I suppose. The other thing I’m trying to do with the Bronte project is to get quite a famous Medium to come to the Bronte Museum and see if they can pick anything up. But this particular Medium hasn’t said yes yet. I thought it would be great because Victorian novels are full of that sort of stuff and people believed it like it was a science.

What books do you like to read?

I like all sorts. I read huge amounts. Crime and Punishment? 1984 is one of my favourites. I’ve read it a few times. Each time I read it something else has come true. George Orwell can be very funny too. You know he’ll talk about the crumbs being on the table, and how the following day they’ve just moved around a bit. I love old classics. Wilkie Collins. I also like Paul Auster, Ian McEwan. At the moment I’m reading Miracle of the Andes by Nanado Perrado, one of the survivors of the 70’s crash.

How very you. Death and Destruction.

I know, it’s typical. I love mountaineering books too. Into Thin Air and The Climb.

And yet you have a fear of heights. So no climbing for you?

No but I like reading about things that I’m frightened of myself. Not that I’m into ‘horror’.

What are you doing tomorrow for your birthday?

I’m going to the British Library at 8:30am to photograph the original manuscript of Jane Eyre, which shows her ‘crossings-out’ and last minute changes like where she replaces the word ‘purple’ for ‘crimson’. My favourite is where she’s put ‘would’ and then crossed it out and put ‘could’ and then she’s crossed that out and put ‘should. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it yet but then I’m never quite sure what I’m going to do with these things until the last minute.

Do you ever feel that your inspiration is almost Divine?

Yeah definitely. The whole thing with Bronte and Nelson, for example. I was thinking that adding the Bronte hair to Nelson’s stone hair was a bit like the principle of Homeopathy at work. You know, here is this Uber-male and then these romantic females get added and together you end up with this super-heroine. So I was on the phone trying to convince the Bronte Museum and the Arts Council and I was asking them to think of it like Homeopathy. I put the phone down and an ex-student called to commission me for some work for her garden. I don’t really do stuff for the outdoors except I did once throw a piece of moonrock into a lake and put a sign that said ‘at the bottom of this lake is a piece of the moon’ and I was telling her about this and about how it was like Homeopathy because you’re putting a piece of the real moon into something that reflects the moon. And she said, ‘Oh that’s fantastic because my husband is Nelson of Nelson’s Homeopathic Remedies’. ‘Oh Gosh,’ I said. Anyway, I was talking about this anecdote at a Conference for the Uncanny a couple of weeks ago and I think mostly when you are immersed in the process of creativity, the more things crop up and these coincidences occur it’s only because you are alert and you’re on a trail and you don’t know what you’re going to end up with and it IS almost like an act of faith. I’m sure it is the same thing with comedy.

Yeah it’s such a buzz.

And for you especially, because you can make these verbal puns at the drop of a hat and people think ‘Wow!’ but really you are just so alert to all those ingredients and it’s like you have an extra sense

Or? I’m a genius.

It’s like improvisational jazz. There’s a little germ of an idea and it grows into something else.

I wanted to ask you about your heroes. Do you have any, in the widest sense?

Marcel Duchamps. Charlie Chaplin. Yves Klein, he was the guy who did the ‘Leap into the Void.’ Piero Manzoni, who would do things like blow up a balloon, put it on a plinth and call it ‘Breath of an Artist.’ He would sell it and the next day it would have deflated. For some reason they all seem to be jokers. Emily Bronte was quite a heroine of mine when I was at school.

Do you ever feel that being an artist is a solitary pursuit?

I’m not a solitary artist-in-the-studio. I’m far too nosey for that. I like to go around poking in other people’s business. I like to find things. Even if it’s on e-bay. I bought some roman coins and buried them in Athens, Georgia, USA. If anyone digs them up, they’ll say, “Oh?”…

Editor’s note: Installations by Parker can also currently be viewed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. You can also see Cornelia’s artwork at the following international galleries:

Solo exhibition, Reina Sofia, Madrid
Early 2009

Find out more about Cornelia at The Artist’s Organisation.