A biography for Cornelia Parkerhasn’t been written yet.
“I am not a propagandist; my work has often had a political dimension but, hopefully, one that is not didactic and is open to interpretation.”
“You don't have to have angst to be an artist, but it's grist to the mill. If you want to explore the whole emotional spectrum in your work, it helps to have experienced intense emotions.”
“I didn't make any money out of my art until I was in my 40s, but it preserved my sanity and my freedom.”
“To make large, site-specific work as an artist is usually quite tortuous; there are so many boxes you have to tick.”
“I don't mind getting older; I just don't want to be in pain.”
“The idea of going off to an office every day and 'putting on my art hat' doesn't appeal.”
“As a working-class girl, receiving free school dinners, I studied art history. Having never had the chance to visit art galleries, I devoured the knowledge, and it has served me well as a practising artist.”
“I'm not very party-political, really; I am more strategic than that.”
“My father was a very controlling man, and it was a big relief to get away from that.”
“I had two great art teachers at school, but even they tried to tell me it was too hard a world. But that made being an artist even more attractive.”
“Being a sculptor who uses found objects, all the objects I use in my work have been designed by other people. So I'm tweaking them in some way by squashing them or throwing them off cliffs! Then I formalise my damage by suspending them or arranging them in some kind of way. So I'm using other people's design in a way, so I'm an 'un-maker.'”
“At times, I've been incapacitated by anxiety and unhappiness. You really know what joy is if you have experienced the opposite.”
“There's only a couple of coffee cups I'll use, because I like the way they feel in my hand. I realise I've got lots of others, but I won't use them because I just don't like... the thickness of the ceramic is too much, or the glaze isn't right.”
“Artists and scientists both think outside the box. They've got to come with genius experiments or ideas to expose the most interesting phenomena.”
“I feel our relationship to life, to the rest of the world, is very tenuous. It feels fleeting.”
“My parents were always doubtful about my making a living as an artist. Even when I was up for the Turner Prize, my mum suggested I apply for a curator's job.”
“I take things that are worn out through overuse, that have become cliches - like the shed, a traditional place of rest and retreat - and I give them a more incandescent future.”
“Driving a steamroller over an old trumpet or a teaspoon is no more destructive than taking a chisel to a lump of marble already torn from the landscape. But people don't see it that way because marble is considered noble.”
“I didn't really know what I was looking at when I first came across Man Ray's 'Dust Breeding,' his photograph of a work by Marcel Duchamp called 'Large Glass.' It looked like an aerial photograph or a view through a microscope.”
“I gave birth aged 45, which was a bit of a shock.”