A biography for Cornelia Parkerhasn’t been written yet.
“A lot of my stuff just wasn't saleable. I still don't do private or corporate commissions. It becomes like interior design. I don't enjoy it. The process makes me feel physically sick.”
“Violence is part of everybody's life, whether you like or express it or not. My work utilises all the energies that I have, and part of it is violent, and I'd rather it be out than in.”
“As you get older, things don't work as well. I do Pilates, and that helps.”
“That's the problem with working and living in the same space - my studio is downstairs, so I often get distracted by domestic things.”
“I do think there is a link between the accidental art the sciences produce and the deliberate art the artist creates, but I can't help feeling that the innocence of the accidental art of science has a power and curious beauty that artists are hard-pressed to match.”
“Paul Auster is my favourite writer, and I'm sure he'd be a very interesting person to share a journey with.”
“What was the most important thing I learned from Chomsky? That capitalism compels us to work ourselves to death in order to stuff our houses with things we don't need. Perhaps this is one thing art can do: create a new aesthetic, one of austerity.”
“I definitely didn't want children, because my childhood was not a very happy time.”
“I don't want to feel like an ambulance chaser, but very often, when I hear about a fire, my first instinct is to make a piece of art out of it.”
“My father wanted a boy badly and didn't get one, so I was happy to be the surrogate boy. I was very strong, always doing manual labour.”
“Living in a warehouse is great - but after a while, you just want a garden.”
“Art and creativity are crucial, whether you're a mathematician, a scientist, or an artist.”
“I think it's quite obvious my work is made by a woman, because I have never wanted to make anything that is not ephemeral. But I definitely want to be thought of as an artist first.”
“I don't want my work to be issue-based. I want people to be able to read it in lots of different ways.”
“I like the idea of taking three-dimensional objects and making them two-dimensional so that they look like cartoons.”
“I have always had a bob haircut because my hair is so fine and doesn't like being long.”
“At my degree show, someone said, 'It's nice, but it's very feminine.' I said, thank you, taking it as a compliment, but they obviously meant it as an insult.”
“I started doing sculpture rather than painting. I was halfway through my degree, and I hadn't really done any introduction courses in sculpture... I'd missed all the technical stuff. I didn't really know how to weld or forge or carve or model. I'd sort of evaded all those technique classes, so I had no technique.”
“I was my father's sidekick, in a way. He was a very dominant, forceful character.”
“My mother became mentally unwell with schizophrenia when I was in my teens... We couldn't watch television because she thought the people on TV were sending her messages. She thought there were hidden cameras everywhere, so we had to have the curtains drawn.”