Cornelia Parker: A satirical ode to the ‘meaninglessness’ of the little man

‘Things seem to be going backwards, we’re soaking ourselves in nostalgia’

Cornelia Parker eloquently states opening a Tate video answering audience questions. Allowing us to soak in a retrospective of her work over her 65 years of life, Parker’s exhibition at Tate Britain is a love letter to meaninglessness; a reminder that the mundane and silent shapes us just as much as the loud and abrasive, and even that the loud and abrasive can be silent in itself. Ridiculing violence, while locating its subversive, comical beauty, Parker’s work in this exhibition flows from one large sculpture piece to the next, while the exhibition space and Parker’s hand-written wall texts make her smaller (yet no less grand) pieces speak for themselves without being hidden by her larger works. In Apollo, it was noted that the exhibition is like speaking to Parker but it is as if she lets us speak over her.

Saying this, Parker’s retrospective exhibition is not devoid of themes, her voice, forming a sort of whisper, echoes through the exhibition. There are many of Parker’s notable works in this exhibition, but perhaps the most prominent, and certainly the most grandiose is Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1999). In this piece, Parker exploded a garden shed, the elements of which include household and garden items such as old prams, toys and a lawnmower. Post white collar revolution, Parker’s piece, as the name would suggest, speaks to the little man left behind; the working class. Dark matter theory involves small objects collapsing under their self-gravity, merging in a continuous hierarchy to form larger and more massive objects. What Parker seems to be whispering to us is that the little man and his culture is lost in Post – Thatcher, now Blairite Britain. What Parker communicates with her weird and wonderful murmur of a theme is the encapsulation of this lost family to remind us and indeed them of what they were. To us, as audience, Parker as ever is playing with us, splitting the audience in two camps of people, one who feels nostalgic for the pieces in the explosion and another that sees this as an exhibition of the lower classes.

Later in the exhibition, Parker again creates an echo of working class Britain, in her 2004 piece, Perpetual Cannon. Flattening the components of a once active brass band, Parker hangs these flattened pieces in a circle, with a single lightbulb in the middle creating a shadow across the exhibition space as slight movements from the suspended instruments create a high barely audible hum. The brass band has roots in the Industrial Revolution, as during this time with increasing urbanization, employers began to finance work bands to decrease the political activity with which the working classes seemed preoccupied during their leisure time. Like the latter, Parker’s piece represents the quashing of working class politics, it is in short, an act of silencing, reclaimed and made beautiful by Parker’s own destruction – comical, enticing and flamboyant, as ever.

In her final piece, Parker returns us to the modern era, and frankly reminds us of the dire state of affairs we are currently in. Island (2022) presents a greenhouse (no doubt a hint to the climate crisis), covered in white chalk, which was made using the White Cliffs of Dover, inside the greenhouse we see tiles from the House of Commons, lit again, by a single light bulb, pulsating to mirror struggling human breath. A nod to our exit from Europe, Parker ends the exhibition  with the reminder that nothing has changed, and this is precisely because, what her ‘redemptive art’ celebrates, is and has been purposely ignored by generations of upper class politicians seeking to quash working class revolutionary, mundane and working activity. ‘Soaking in nostalgia’ Parker’s exhibition tells a cautionary and whimsical tale of recent British history. Dripping in irony, Parker satirically mocks our woes, while serving a reminder that something we view as nothing is both remarkable and should be taken note of, in a ‘redemptive’ fashion.