Cornelia Parker

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and three, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Cosway this week is an artist. Conventionally she'd be called a sculptor, but she doesn't actually make anything herself. Her raw ingredients come from the world around her a garden shed, domestic silverware, chalk from the Dover cliffs, beaten, flattened, exploded, or simply rearranged to give them new meaning.

Presenter0:47

She's been nominated for the Turner Prize, she's been artist in residence at the Science Museum, and she's got shows coming up in New York, Geneva, Barcelona, Copenhagen, and a new piece shortly to go on show at Tate Britain.

Presenter0:59

Brought up on a Cheshire farm, where hard manual labour drove her into artistic escape, she went to art school, where she won a first class degree and has worked as an artist all her professional life.

Presenter1:10

I know there are people who are hostile to my work, she says, but artists who try new things have always been hated. She is Cornelia Parker. How much do you mind Cornelia being hated, as you put it? Does it does it sting?

Cornelia Parker1:24

Hated is too strong a word. I don't mind really, I suppose the whole point of when I first went to art school was that I thought I was being a rebel and it felt a very comfortable fit somehow. And now it's obviously not that at all. But um no, I don't mind being hated.

Presenter1:38

To

Cornelia Parker1:39

Yeah. That as long as you

Presenter1:39

get a response, then then that's what you want, isn't it? That's what you're asking for.

Cornelia Parker1:43

Well all I want to do is people to experience the work and they can do with the experience what they want, but I I hopefully making something that communicates ideas or communicates feelings and that's what I'm about.

Presenter1:55

You certainly got that when you put the actress in the glass coffin, Snow White like, in the Serpentine Gallery a few years ago. That was I mean, that was something that people did queue up to see, wasn't it?

Cornelia Parker2:06

The Maybe was a collaboration be with Tilda Swinton. I mean, it was Tilda's idea originally to sleep as a as Snow White in a glass coffin, and through our collaboration it developed into her sleeping as herself in a sort of museum-like environment surrounded by iconic objects belonging to famous people from history.

Presenter2:24

They were what, the Churchill's stub end of his cigar, there was misses Simpson's ice skates, which was

Cornelia Parker2:30

Something. What were they there for? Well, I I was desperately wanting to have some women iconic figures in there and Queen Victoria's in there. I thought Mrs. Simpson was like the flip end of the establishment and I quite like that.

Presenter2:42

Yeah.

Presenter2:43

There was Dickens's Quill, wasn't there?

Cornelia Parker2:45

Yeah, the pen with which Charles Dickens wrote his last novel. I mean, he'd used thousands of quill pens over his lifetime, but this is one that was left on his desk when he died, and I found that an incredibly charged object, even if it was just a kind of feather.

Presenter2:48

I mean he

Presenter2:56

Now one should never ask an artist w what it meant. I know that, but you're going to have to help us. So there we have this this alive but sleeping actress in a glass coffin surrounded by these artefacts which belong to dead people. I mean

Cornelia Parker3:11

Yeah, I think perhaps in the end the piece seemed to be about mortality. You know, Tilda was alive like we were. All the viewers obviously were alive watching the piece or experiencing the piece. Whereas Tilda was alive

Presenter3:11

Uh

Cornelia Parker3:21

But absent. I mean I know from the people I spoke to who saw the exhibition that it was more about experience and it reflected back on yourself and I think everybody talks something different away from the event and that was hopefully what art should be about, that it should be very open and open to interpretation. And it's not about one specific thing. I mean as an artist you never know what you're creating until you've finished it and even then you don't know what you might have created. But it becomes a catalyst hopefully.

Presenter3:47

What must be very difficult for you is that you have to tell people to do that with a work of art. You don't have to tell them to do that with music, do you?

Presenter3:55

I w wish people would.

Presenter3:57

Uh

Cornelia Parker3:57

Open their sort of eyes and hearts to art and the way they do music because when you

Cornelia Parker4:03

listen to a piece of music, you you're moved on a very emotional level. You've sort of been transported. You just let it in. Yes, you might not like the music, you might not like the rhythms, but you you accept it for what it is. And I think a lot of art people use their minds, you know, their intellects first and their their senses second and I'd rather them use their senses first and

Cornelia Parker4:22

Let's see where that takes them and allow themselves to be free with it. Tell me about the first piece of music that's going to stir your senses on your desktop.

Cornelia Parker4:29

Well I heard this music first in Merton's in um in the mid eighties, it was accompanying a theatre piece I saw by Jan Faber at the ICA and I just loved it and I've been playing it in my studio ever since.

Speaker 45:02

So

Speaker 45:06

Oh my god.

Presenter5:10

The Mertons and Maximizing the Audience. Apart from anything else, Cornelio, it seems you have a lot of fun doing what you do. Tell me about, for example, cold dark matter, which is on permanent display in the tape.

Presenter5:22

This began life as a garden shed, essentially, didn't it?

Cornelia Parker5:26

Yes, I suppose I use art as a sort of umbrella to do all the things I've always wanted to do, like blow something up or steamroller something. And I was thinking I'd love to blow up a house or an attic or something that's like universal that we all know about. And the garden sheds just seemed to be the most blow-up of them. Yes, I think because I'd spent my childhood outside and gardening and cultivating were very much part of my upbringing. I think the garden shed has always been like the attic for me. It's where all the things from the house disappear into and it's like an escape. It's also a British institution. It is a British institution. So you blew it up. And so when I was wanting to blow it up, I was thinking, who would I like to help me blow it up? Because of course I couldn't do it myself. And so...

Presenter5:57

Yeah.

Speaker 25:57

Uh

Presenter6:00

So you do your talk.

Cornelia Parker6:08

You know, I thought IRA, um uh special effects people, there's all kinds of people who could possibly help me, but in the end the British Army seemed to be the people because th they were a British institution too and they were supposed to protect us and I liked the irony of them destroying this little um fragile g garden shed.

Presenter6:24

So you you blew it up. What happens then? So all these pieces, these splinters and bits of old bicycle or whatever are are lying on the ground. I presume you did it somewhere out in the open air.

Cornelia Parker6:34

Yeah, we did it at the Army School of Ammunition in Banbury and all the officers and private sort of raked the field and picked up all the tiny fragments. I took them away with me as my raw material and then resurrected them in the gallery on wires. The light bulb that was originally in the shed before it blew up is in the centre and then there was a small object and there was a medium object and then there was the the big objects and then there was the wood that was on the outside of the shed is like the skin. So it's quite formal but because of the light it looks like it's exploding again.

Presenter7:00

Because of the

Presenter7:03

Mm. It's very dramatic because the light comes from the outside and therefore casts shadows on all of the the walls around it. It's phenomenal.

Presenter7:09

But I say you have fun. You also, did you not, went to the Colt firearms factory and got them to shoot things that were not bullets as bullets.

Cornelia Parker7:17

I think a lot of my work is about confronting authority or fear of authority, and I found the gun a very intimidating object, obviously. So when I was making a show in Connecticut, the home of cult firearms, I went to the factory and

Presenter7:21

Yeah.

Cornelia Parker7:30

asked the ballistics experts there if they could shoot things through shotguns that weren't bullets, like pearl necklaces and money. So they shot pearls into a suit for me and some money into a dress, you know, like the contents of the man's pocket. And I think they quite liked the task because it was something that you know, it was difficult to do. And while I was there I also saw the production process of the Colt forty five gun, which is very iconic. Um and I saw the very first blank piece of metal that they cast before they

Speaker 27:58

Yeah.

Presenter7:58

Before they

Cornelia Parker7:59

stopped drilling and adding bits and asked them if they could finish them for me at that point, so I made another piece called Embryo Firearms, which was interrupted guns basically.

Presenter8:07

They are yes, like little embryonic pieces of metal, aren't they? Rather strange. But I'm interested with the with the suit and the dress, you sort of you hang those up as, you know, dre dress shot through with money or that's what it's called.

Cornelia Parker8:10

Yeah.

Cornelia Parker8:17

Yes, that's what it's called.

Presenter8:21

I mean, what that suggests is kind of love, betrayal, revenge, all those things. I'm not asking you what I should think, but I'm asking you if.

Cornelia Parker8:29

I'm asking you

Presenter8:31

The narrative that it might suggest to me is important to you, that these things, people will stand in front of them and think of stories that might be.

Cornelia Parker8:38

Yes, I mean I love I love stories, I love narratives. And my grandfather was a great raconteur and my father is too and I like things that have narratives. So I create the narratives I suppose. That's what if I'm creating something that's what I'm doing.

Cornelia Parker8:50

Tell me about your second record.

Cornelia Parker8:51

In a Broken Dream by Python Lee Jackson, son by Rod Stewart.

Cornelia Parker8:55

This is supposed to be one of the first singles I ever bought and I still love it. And it was on my original Desert Island Disc list that I made when I was 15.

Speaker 49:07

Give someone my name.

Speaker 49:13

It's someone great every

Speaker 49:19

Just be for all day.

Speaker 49:25

Before nine o'clock

Speaker 49:30

On the pad before

Presenter9:32

Rod Stewart and Python Lee Jackson's In a Broken Dream. Um you've mentioned, Cornelia, the need to rebel and I talked about needing to escape in your childhood. What were you trying to escape from? Tell me about that childhood.

Cornelia Parker9:44

Well, I lived on a small holding. It wasn't really even a farm. We had a few handful of cows and a few pigs, and my father always had to have other jobs to make ends meet. So there was a lot of work to be done. There was three daughters, and I was a surrogate son, so I ended up doing a lot of manual labour outside.

Presenter10:00

Well, you were the most practical the tallest and the standard.

Cornelia Parker10:01

Well, yeah.

Cornelia Parker10:03

So what did you have to do? Well, you know, a lot of planting vegetables by hand, helping lay hedges, weeding, mucking out the pigs, milking cows by hand, stringing up thousands of tomato plants. I mean, stringing up went on. A lot of stringing up went on.

Presenter10:15

Stringing up went on. A lot of stringing up went on.

Cornelia Parker10:19

Gotho

Presenter10:19

Okay.

Cornelia Parker10:19

Uh Just still doing the same.

Presenter10:20

Yeah.

Cornelia Parker10:21

Yeah.

Presenter10:21

Uh

Presenter10:22

But it doesn't sound as if

Presenter10:24

There was altogether a lot of joy in

Cornelia Parker10:25

I mean I think the times when I found pleasure was when I'd sneak off and escape down the fields and climb up trees and and it was almost like taking time out which wasn't really allowed somehow that I had to take out time for myself. You weren't supposed to play. Well I mean I think it wasn't as as deliberate as that but it just there wasn't much time to play. You know, the the things to be done and so many hours in the day.

Speaker 410:46

Yeah.

Cornelia Parker10:49

And so, um, I think I had to make my, you know, play.

Cornelia Parker10:54

For myself I had to take it.

Cornelia Parker11:00

Not all the time, no. I mean, then, you know, there was there was the whole the whole range from A to Z. The whole the whole nine yards really.

Presenter11:07

But you needed to go get away by yourself up into trees. You you you made tree houses, apparently.

Cornelia Parker11:13

Yes, I think most children do, if they can get a tree. Um but yeah, no, I I would go and create a new it's like a little home somewhere. Well I used to make little time capsules that I would hide in knots in the tree or knots in our house because our house was like an old Tudor cottage so there's lots of knot holes and I'd you know put money in there, little notes or little keepstakes. Notes of the future really, notes to people who might find them.

Presenter11:39

I suppose a little bit of conceptual art.

Cornelia Parker11:41

Uh

Presenter11:41

Instinctive conceptual art.

Cornelia Parker11:41

Instinctive conceptual art. Yes, I think children are, you know, first class conceptual artists, really.

Presenter11:48

You also did something very unusual with your pocket money.

Cornelia Parker11:52

Um well I used to put my pocketman on the railway track because I was terrified of trains and I think by putting my pocketman on the railway track I you know the train would go by and squish it. You know it's almost like proof of the the the evil powers of the world, that you know there's always physical force out there. And I kept the money for years and it had its own intrinsic worth really, rather than being something that passes through your hands very quickly and then

Presenter12:12

Again, something else that's informed your professional work. I'm looking here at a photograph of a particular piece of work which was lots of silver, not coins, but pieces of um well, I don't know what silver plate. Um yes, not silver.

Cornelia Parker12:23

Yeah.

Presenter12:27

I wish. Toast racks and trophies and oh, actually, there's a musical instrument there, isn't there? But it's all.

Cornelia Parker12:27

Ah.

Presenter12:33

Beautifully laid out, running down a kind of track in a beautiful curving line, and there at the end, threatening it, is this huge steam roller with steam coming out of it, and it's just about to go and squish it, huh?

Cornelia Parker12:45

Well I think when I was first making work I was very clumsy and I was always breaking things or squashing things by accident so I decided to make that in a feature of my work. I think you know through cartoons, through Tom and Jerry Roadrunner, you know there's all sorts of cartoon deaths going on. Things get squashed, things get thrown off cliffs, things get steamrolled. And I really like that kind of cliché way of trying to kill things off. So I got a steamroller to squash all the silver plate so that all these things that had very different histories, because they're all second hand, got united in the the same fate. You know, they all met their death on a dusty road on the same day.

Presenter13:17

And then what did you do them?

Cornelia Parker13:18

And then I sort of resurrected them basically, gave them a good polish, and then I suspended them as 30 pools of silver. And it was called 30 pieces of silver.

Presenter13:24

It's cool.

Cornelia Parker13:26

Janice Joplin and Cry Baby. I mean I just love Janice. She had a tragically short life and I think this was released posthumously and I just think it's a fantastic release of energy.

Speaker 413:38

Go to your pay.

Speaker 413:41

On your heart itself.

Speaker 413:46

And if you need me, you know that I'll always be

Speaker 413:53

If you ever want me, come on, it's

Presenter14:06

Janice Joplin and Cry Baby. The other thing, Cornelia Parker, that you've given the old Roadrunner Tom and Jerry splat treatment to recently is a is a a piece that you were commissioned to do for the V and A. Um it's a brass band. You kind of squashed well, two brass bands, I think fifty odd brass instruments.

Cornelia Parker14:24

Yes, it's one large brass band. Um when I was asked to make a piece of work for the new British Galleries, which opened in two thousand one, um for the BNA, which is one of my favorite museums, and that's a museum dedicated to craft, you know, to and into decorative art. And so when I was looking round the museum, I realized actually there was

Presenter14:36

And the decorative

Cornelia Parker14:42

You know, like there's a musical instrument section, for example, and there's there's harpsichords and violins and

Cornelia Parker14:47

Beautifully crashed from instrument, but there's nothing as vulgar as a brass band. And so I thought that the kind of working class sort of

Cornelia Parker14:53

Aesthetic wasn't very present, although obviously a lot of the work had been made by working class people. And so the work is suspended between two floors and a hole between the two. But why did you have to squash it? Why did you have to squash the breath from it? Well, because they were all redundant and defunct instruments. They'd almost come to the end of the natural life. I bought them scrap from the Salvation Army, the British Legion, various collieries, unions, and all those kind of institutions are

Cornelia Parker15:19

You know, the collieries no longer exist, Salvation Army is on the wane, um, British Legion have run out of puff, and somehow the brass band was flourishing in Victorian times, which is

Cornelia Parker15:30

you know, that the the galleries deal with work up to the 1900s. So it's almost like on the decline and somehow it's almost like the last gaffes of the British Em Empire. I just wanted to rob them of their breath because they were already breathless, but to elevate them again and give them a new life as a ceiling rose, which is what the piece looks like from underneath.

Presenter15:46

Exactly, because they're they're kind of arranged in a sort of fanfare, aren't they?

Cornelia Parker15:50

Yes, they're very heraldic. They mimic ceiling roses in stately homes, but they're using...

Presenter15:52

Yeah.

Presenter15:54

Mm.

Cornelia Parker15:56

a different kind of iconography.

Presenter15:58

But is there something else quite personal about you going on there as well, I wonder. I mean, one senses a kind of religious undertone, if you like, that you quite like, you know, doing things to death and then and then resurrecting them.

Cornelia Parker16:10

Oh, that's my Catholic upbringing for you.

Cornelia Parker16:13

you know, hell and damnation and, you know, salvation, all that stuff is it's informs I mean, I'm not religious now at all, but I think, you know, once a lapsed Catholic, always a lapse Catholic and there's a bit of guilt there. Oh, lots. And I shed it all the time for making the work. But at the the you know, the fact it was called Breathless Too, I mean I was pregnant at the time I made that piece and I finished it just a few days before I gave birth, so I was literally breathless when I made it. I see.

Presenter16:34

I made it.

Presenter16:36

But just going back to you, you as a child, as we say, quite hardworking childhood, but when you got to school, and you were obviously, I know, very good at art and so.

Presenter16:44

Did you then say to yourself, this is what I want to do, I want to make a living doing art? Or was that part of a rebellion because it was not perceived as a proper job?

Cornelia Parker16:52

I see

Cornelia Parker16:54

Well, um when I was about fifteen I went to London with my art teachers and I s you know, visited the Tate and all these different museums for the first time and I that was the first time I thought, wow, this is something I'd love to

Cornelia Parker17:06

be able to do, you know, to be to m make a living as an artist.

Presenter17:09

But did you actually think I would like to have an exhibition there? I'd like my name up in lights, as it were.

Cornelia Parker17:12

I'd like my name up and

Cornelia Parker17:14

Yeah. I think every young aspiring artist wants to exhibit to the Tate and I thought, well, I'll exhibit here one day.

Presenter17:14

The artistic

Cornelia Parker17:21

And then when I told my teachers I wanted to go to art school, they were saying, Oh, perhaps you should become a teacher and I said, Well, I don't want to be a teacher, I want to be an artist And so even just wanting to be an artist seemed to be a rebellion against a proper job. What about the parents? What do they think?

Cornelia Parker17:34

Well, I don't think they still reconcile themselves to my career. I think they much rather, you know, I had a

Cornelia Parker17:40

a nine to five job where I got a proper wage, so they're still kind of slightly worried, I think. Do they come and see you? Yeah.

Cornelia Parker17:45

And they're getting pretty old now, so um I I brought them down to London to see the Turner Prize show, you know, and uh and my mother said, Oh, you know, perhaps you could go into set design

Cornelia Parker17:55

You know, she's still thinking of what I might possibly do for a career, even though I'd been nominated for the Turner Prize. So so I think it's just a very different world.

Cornelia Parker18:04

Next piece of music? Oh, Bob Dylan. I could have chosen hundreds of his tracks, but um I decided on Lay, Lay De Lay.

Speaker 418:13

Lay, lady, lay.

Speaker 418:16

Lay across my big grey space

Speaker 418:25

Lay Le Lay.

Speaker 418:29

Lay across my big breast band.

Speaker 418:38

Whatever colours you have.

Presenter18:40

Obdylon and Lay Lady Lay. Um you went Cornelia to art college, first in Cheltenham, and then you went on to Wolverhampton. Was there a specific point when you realized you didn't want to be a painter, but you wanted to be a sculptor?

Cornelia Parker18:52

Um, it was probably halfway through my degree. I mean, I was still clinging on to the hope that I could paint, but really I was finding it very

Cornelia Parker18:59

frustrating and very hard work. I was trying to paint something like light coming in through a window on a canvas with paint, which is all about creating an illusion. And then I'd escape from the uh the studio and go down to the derelict houses down below and there'd be real light coming through real windows. And I remember taking a window out of the derelict house and taking it back to the studio and putting, you know, replacing the panes of glass with three little paintings of light coming in through the window. And then the last

Cornelia Parker19:22

pain I left with the the real light coming through. And I thought, well this is this is far better than what I'd painted. So this was the last painting I think I did. I just left it behind and started using materials for their own

Cornelia Parker19:34

History

Presenter19:35

And indeed, if we then leap forward in time in your life to the piece that was nominated for the Turner Prize, this is a Texan church struck by lightning. This is called Mass, Colder, Darker Matter. Reminiscent actually of the Shed, the Blown Up Shed, but this wasn't blown up.

Cornelia Parker19:47

Yeah.

Cornelia Parker19:50

No, this was an act of God. It was a lightning bolt destroyed it. And I asked the minister from the church if I could have.

Cornelia Parker19:58

the charcoal. And and I asked him if it was an act of God, what he thought about that. And he said, Oh, well I think God thought I should have a bigger church And so I took this and I resurrected the church, so I rebuilt the church in space, um but it's all blackened charcoal.

Presenter20:11

But it's only pieces of it's not the whole church.

Cornelia Parker20:13

No, it's it's just the it's just the wood infrastructure of the church.

Presenter20:16

Yes, and again, all strung. I don't know whether it's wire.

Cornelia Parker20:20

And if you do

Presenter20:20

And do you do that?

Cornelia Parker20:22

Yeah.

Presenter20:23

You do all those individuals and is it important which position which bit of old charcoal is in? Or do you create it in the moment? If you took it down, put it up somewhere else, would it be different?

Cornelia Parker20:30

Or do you create

Cornelia Parker20:34

I think this one has again, like the shed has a formal structure to it. So all little tiny particles of charcoal are on the outside, the skin, and then as you go towards the centre of the piece, the pieces get bigger and bigger.

Presenter20:44

You've done something similar with chalk from the White Cliffs of Dover, haven't you?

Cornelia Parker20:48

Yes, actually it was from Beachy Head, when Beachy Head fell into the sea, and I m asked British Heritage if I could have

Cornelia Parker20:54

you know, about a ton or so of the chalk, and I suspended it like a cliff face in a very formal rectangle, almost like a cinema screen. Uh

Presenter21:00

Uh

Cornelia Parker21:00

And it was called Edge of England, because literally that's what it was.

Presenter21:00

Yeah.

Presenter21:03

Is this I mean, these things are entirely born of your imagination, or are there modern artists who you learned about as you studied that who've informed this kind of work? Is there anybody you'd point at?

Cornelia Parker21:13

I think when

Cornelia Parker21:15

I think when I was, you know, at school I always thought of sculpture being very solid, bronzes or marble on a plinth, and it seemed very impregnable in some kind of way. And then when I was at art school, I discovered the Artipovera movement, which happened in Italy in the sort of late 60s, early 70s. Just poor materials. Yeah, so they might use string or cabbages or light or heat. And I think it suddenly knocked everything off the pedestal and it became accessible and you realise you could just make sculpture from what's on your kitchen table and that was very liberating to me. Record number five. Jocelyn Pooke's Dionysius. Jocelyn is somebody I've known for many years and I shared her house with her way back in the mid eighties so I know her music inside out.

Cornelia Parker21:57

And I particularly love this trail, this I think it was used in Gangs of New York.

Speaker 422:05

Oh, ten, over ten, oh, it's ten, oh.

Speaker 422:10

See

Speaker 422:18

Tell Ten Old Tell Motel Seed

Presenter22:28

Jocelyn Pooke's Dionysus. You sound to me, Cornelia, as I sort of read about your life after university and everything, to be, if you like, to slot into the stereotype that we have of artists, you know, that that you lived in a squat or you lived on not very much money, you were surrounded by like-minded people. You is that how it was for you?

Cornelia Parker22:50

Yes, I I mean I

Cornelia Parker22:51

First moved to London in 84 and I squatted a house that was about to be demolished for the M eleven Link Road in Leightonstone, next door to a friend of mine, and um which very quickly got I got taken on by a housing cooperative and and ended up living in Leightonstone for ten years with the threat of the road

Cornelia Parker23:07

Iminent.

Presenter23:08

But you had you had had a solo exhibition, I think, quite early on. You didn't take commissions, did you? No, I don't.

Cornelia Parker23:16

take commission'cause I think I find it very difficult, especially if you make installations, it you can very easily slip into making interior decorating for people's living rooms and and it's some you know, whereas a painting is it has its own parameters and it's not compromised necessarily where it g goes. I think installation is so easily compromised.

Presenter23:31

So what would you do with your stuff after you'd created it? You just demolish it and chuck it?

Cornelia Parker23:35

Well, a lot of the work I made was very frembled and would only exist for the exhibition and then it would be taken down and thrown away. So now I was quite happy with that. It didn't seem to be I wanted to leave a lasting monument. So what changed?

Cornelia Parker23:47

I had a quite severe car accident in nineteen ninety four when I shattered my pelvis and you know, had my near death moment and I was you know, spent several weeks in hospital and several months recuperating. And I think it was thinking, Well, if I did had died in that car accident there would have been nothing of mine left for posterity. I felt I should grow up a little bit and try and leave something behind.

Presenter24:06

I think the surgeon left something behind him.

Cornelia Parker24:09

In fact, the my x-rays and my pelvis look actually very like my exploded shed, you know, this arrangement of pins and the third and eye joke that we'd done a collaboration, you know, a a hidden work.

Cornelia Parker24:20

Record number six. Well this is written, it's called 159 to 161 by my neighbour Graham Miller, and good friend who's a musician and composer. And he when I was in hospital

Cornelia Parker24:32

He made this journey from his house to my house, sort of doing an oral history really of the street and which houses were boarded up, which bits were about to be demolished. And then he got to my front door and I wasn't in. And I have a lump in my throat every time I hear it, and it's it's a very particular time that's been captured.

Speaker 424:56

Fricked up.

Speaker 424:58

Corrugated fence, wasn't that yesterday?

Speaker 425:01

Red quarry tile path.

Speaker 425:04

Red steps

Speaker 425:06

Pink front door, square in the middle, one six one.

Speaker 425:13

Bye bye.

Presenter25:15

Excerpts from one five nine to one six one by your friend Graham Miller on his way to your house, Cornelia. So you had that accident, I think, in your very late thirties, about, what, eight years ago. A lot has changed since then. You're now represented by a gallery which you had refused to have happen before. You have solo exhibitions. You you're making a decent living, hm?

Cornelia Parker25:36

Yes, I mean for years I made my living out of teaching in art schools.

Presenter25:40

But you're still a maverick, really? You like to think of yourself as a maverick. You don't slot into pigeonholes. You won't go into the conceptual artist pigeonhole, will you?

Cornelia Parker25:48

The reason I wanted to be an artist in the first place is I I wanted to be free and there's always people who want to pigeonhole you and you know put you in smaller and smaller pockets, but I I like the idea of just being an artist.

Presenter25:58

Hm. You haven't been bought by Charles Archie.

Cornelia Parker26:01

Um I have.

Cornelia Parker26:03

But he sold me in his his auction at Christmas.

Presenter26:05

Which one?

Cornelia Parker26:06

Uh he's bought a few pieces of my work, but they're not things he ever exhibited and and they're not my favourite pieces of work by any means. Um

Presenter26:11

Um

Cornelia Parker26:13

One of them was a coffin that was splintered into matchsticks and dipped in match material.

Cornelia Parker26:18

And spread out on on sandpaper. On sandpaper, yes. Which it was one of my more explicit works. But I felt he could have chosen something a little less literal.

Presenter26:27

But y you see, that's very interesting, isn't it? That that I mean, is that not con s conceptual art? That that that you have an idea and you carry the idea out so that it communicates itself very quickly to people who come and see it. But actually you could write it down on a piece of paper. If people sat and looked at the words for long enough, they'd know what you meant.

Cornelia Parker26:46

Uh

Presenter26:46

I think all artists

Cornelia Parker26:47

Conceptual. Every historical painter had an idea before they started out.

Presenter26:51

Yes, but then they did it. You don't necessarily have to do yours, do you?

Cornelia Parker26:55

I think so. I mean, I think that, you know, an idea is one thing, but actually the work might be a very different thing. The idea might sort of evaporate along the way. It's almost like a a sort of decoy or a sort of s um a skin or something to just to to flesh out um when you're making the piece. I mean ideas just uh starts you off, I think.

Presenter27:13

Hmm.

Cornelia Parker27:13

And then the experience of making it and what you make can be very different.

Presenter27:17

So it can turn out to be something quite different. But some conceptual art certainly is just thought up by the conceptual artist and then is carried out by a workman, isn't it?

Cornelia Parker27:25

Yeah.

Presenter27:25

Yes, I mean

Cornelia Parker27:25

Uh

Presenter27:25

So is it articulated?

Cornelia Parker27:26

So is it art?

Presenter27:28

Yeah.

Presenter27:29

He did actually wield a paintbrush and I mean he operated within the con confines of conventional art. I mean he put paint on canvas.

Cornelia Parker27:29

Uh

Cornelia Parker27:36

I think there's no such thing as conventional art now. I mean, I think all those boundaries have been eroded a long time ago. And that's what's fantastic. I mean, in a lifetime, I don't want to spend my whole life perfecting a technique, you know, let's say silver engraving, because that's all I'd be doing. I mean, I've got so many different ideas. I I will just employ people who have that technical skill. I don't need to spend all my time learning about explosives to blur up a garden shed when I might just do one piece of work that's based on that.

Presenter27:59

Hm. Now you're about to put on show your latest piece of work, um which remains a secret, but g give us an an idea of it. It goes on show in Tate Britain shortly, doesn't it? What's the thinking behind

Cornelia Parker28:09

Um yeah

Cornelia Parker28:11

Thanks just

Presenter28:11

Get it.

Cornelia Parker28:11

Well, I'm just going to I'm going to use as my raw materials two existing artworks. One's quite iconic marble piece and uh the other is a more ephemeral conceptual piece.

Presenter28:12

Little sister.

Cornelia Parker28:22

And I shall make I shall put those two materials together and make a new work.

Presenter28:23

Uh

Cornelia Parker28:27

How tantalizing

Presenter28:28

So and are they pieces of work that we know very well?

Cornelia Parker28:31

I think one of them is very familiar and the other a a little less familiar.

Presenter28:35

So you're going to get a bit of flack for mucking about with something we know and presumably love quite a lot.

Cornelia Parker28:41

Um I think this particular uh piece of work has had suffered a different kind of flack in the past, so I think I'm just um

Cornelia Parker28:48

reiterating something that happened a long time ago.

Cornelia Parker28:50

Tell me about your seventh record.

Cornelia Parker28:53

James Brown, and it's a man's man's world. I think it speaks for itself.

Speaker 429:01

Man's words.

Speaker 429:06

This is a man's world

Speaker 429:12

But it wouldn't be nothing

Speaker 429:15

Nothing.

Speaker 429:18

But that's

Speaker 429:19

A woman I can

Presenter29:26

You see?

Speaker 429:27

Uh

Presenter29:27

James Brown and It's a Man's, Man's, Man's. Well, there's three mans in there. Also men, I like that.

Presenter29:34

Um I guess you're going to be absolutely fine on this desert island. You know, you're practical and active, you can put a few things together.

Cornelia Parker29:41

I think I'm I think I'm gonna miss, obviously, my family, you know, my husband and

Cornelia Parker29:46

You know, eighteen month old little girl. I think I'll be fine if I can find a few animals to make my friends. You know, when I was living on my small holding I got on better with animals than I did people.

Presenter29:51

Yeah.

Presenter29:56

But'cause you're quite gregarious now, having been quite solitary then, really, aren't you? Yeah, no, I think I'd miss somebody to talk to. But escape is what you do.

Cornelia Parker30:00

Yeah, that's

Presenter30:04

How are you going to escape from a desert island? Or are you just

Cornelia Parker30:07

Happy to escape to it.

Presenter30:08

Yeah.

Cornelia Parker30:08

Well, I think I must be escaped mentally until some passing ship comes along.

Cornelia Parker30:13

Last piece of music.

Cornelia Parker30:14

This is Gavin Breyers' Jesus' Blood Never Fail Me Yet, which is a longstanding favourite. It's based on a piece of found sound of a tramp singing the refrain.

Cornelia Parker30:25

And then he builds up layer by layer, and then Tom Waits comes in to accompany him.

Speaker 430:37

Hey London Hello!

Speaker 430:40

Yeah.

Speaker 430:48

Thing on.

Speaker 430:52

Really?

Presenter30:56

Tom Waits and a tramp performing Gavin Bryar's Jesus Blood never failed me yet. Another kind of considered trifle, really. It's it's very much what your work is about, isn't it? It's picking up things that nobody else wants or thought of giving any value to.

Cornelia Parker31:09

Yes, I think this particular fragment of A Singing was an outtake from a friend's documentary and I I think he saw the value in it and and built on it, and that's exactly what I'm trying to do with the fragments I collect.

Presenter31:18

Yeah.

Cornelia Parker31:21

Now I bet your studio is covered in fragments that nobody else wants, isn't it?

Presenter31:30

Now if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Cornelia Parker31:33

Um, I think it'd have to be Janice Joplin Cry Baby. What about your book? I'm going to take Ten Thousand Things Every Child Should Know, which is this wonderful sort of nineteen thirties encyclopedia that I've been using for many, many years to mostly that's where I get all my ideas from.

Speaker 431:47

Yes, I bought it.

Cornelia Parker31:47

Like what? Well, they because it's like empire, you know, British Empire stuff. I mean, they use Saint Paul's Cathedral to measure the Everest or the deepest ocean. So they use visual analogy all the time. You know, they'll say the amount of gold in a wedding rink and that gold's so pliable you could make a wire that can circumnavigate the earth. That kind of thing.

Presenter32:04

Which is what you've done. You've unraveled a a a gold wedding.

Cornelia Parker32:07

Yeah, so I did the circumference of a living room though.

Presenter32:07

Yeah, yeah.

Cornelia Parker32:10

Because actually the technology to make it into a thread round the world doesn't exist. So that's your secret. What is this encyclopedia called again? It's 10,000 things every child should know.

Cornelia Parker32:19

And you know

Presenter32:19

And you know a lot of them.

Cornelia Parker32:20

Yes, but there's still a lot more that I haven't discovered yet.

Presenter32:20

Yeah.

Presenter32:23

What about your luxury?

Cornelia Parker32:24

I think I might take a solar-powered vibrator because not that I've ever used one, but I'd love to have the chance and I imagine you might get bored with it after five minutes and I'll squander my luxury on that.

Presenter32:34

Cornelia Parker, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 232:45

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.