Focus on portraiture … Ronald Stevenson (1983) by Victoria Crowe. Photograph: RS Anderson/Victoria Crowe

Tacita Dean and Jenny Saville lead strong female presence at Edinburgh art festival

Phyllida Barlow, Lucy Skaer and Victoria Crowe also feature in the lineup alongside old masters including Canaletto and Rembrandt

Dale Berning Sawa
Mon 26 Mar 2018 00.01 BST

The Edinburgh art festival has announced its 2018 programme. The annual event, which this year takes place between 26 July and 26 August alongside the international festival and the fringe, will mark its 15th anniversary with 36 exhibitions at venues across the city.

Jane Eyre by Cornelia Parker

On the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth

Jane Eyre

by Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker

Saturday 16 April 2016 08.00 BST

I identified strongly with Jane and her painful childhood when I first read Jane Eyre as a teenager as I was having quite a painful one myself (though perhaps not as bad as hers). So later in the book when she overcame her shyness, threw off her childhood problems and then became this incredibly strong woman, it was emotional and cathartic. I reread it in 2006 when on a residency at Haworth Parsonage. Back in London in the British Library I actually got to leaf through the original text, neatly written in three musty notebooks. She had obviously copied out the manuscript many times but this was her final draft, so seeing where she had deleted a single word here and there made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. There were about 50 corrections in all, which I recorded through photographs: “crimson” was crossed out and replaced by “purple”; “soul” was changed to “spirit”, “glimpse” became “idea”. I also took images through an electron microscope of tiny punctures in Charlotte’s pincushion, holes that she made unconsciously when sewing, and of split ends in the little plait of Emily’s hair that had been kept after she died. The Brontës and their characters have attracted so much literary attention, been the subject of so many Hollywood films, it seemed appropriate to work with the seemingly inconsequential traces, the tiny little frictions of everyday life.

When my daughter read it at school a couple of years ago, it was touching to read out passages to one another. The book has stayed with me all my life and I was pleased that she loved it too.

THE GUARDIAN

DRAGON

Jane Eyre by Sarah Waters
Jane Eyre by Teresa Hadley
Jane Eyre by Jeanette Winterson
Jane Eyre by Margaret Drabble
Jane Eyre by Esther Freud
Jane Eyre by Andrew Motion
Jane Eyre by O'Farrell
Jane Eyre by Polly Samson
Jane Eyre by Helen Dunmore
Jane Eyre by Blake Morrison
Jane Eyre by Julie Myerson
Jane Eyre by Cornelia Parker
Jane Eyre by John Mullan
Jane Eyre by Helen Simpson
Jane Eyre by Polly Teale
Jane Eyre by Samantha Ellis
Jane Eyre by Mick Jackson
Jane Eyre by Joanna Briscoe
Jane Eyre by Linda Grant
Jane Eyre by Sarah Perry

Cornelia Parker

Visionaries 2016: Cornelia Parker

•  Louisa Buck 

9 APRIL 2016 • 7:00AM

T

he sculptor and installation artist was nominated by Louisa Buck for continuing to innovate and surprise after more than three decades

Art has no boundaries for Cornelia Parker, OBE. Over the past three decades, the Cheshire-born Turner-nominated artist has stretched bullets into lengths of wire, made drawings from rattlesnake venom, squashed a silver dinner service with a steam roller, sent a meteorite back into space and enlisted the army’s ammunition corps to blow up a garden shed. Now she’s the first British artist to be commissioned to make a site-specific outdoor work for the Roof Garden of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unveiled this April (19), it will remain in situ until October 31.

Cornelia Parker / This much I know / I dressed up a statue of Churchill as a Dadaist act

Cornelia Parker

This much I know

Cornelia Parker: I dressed up a statue of Churchill as a Dadaist act

The artist, 60, on blowing up sheds, killing chickens in Cheshire and getting cross with Jeremy Corbyn


Ursula Kenny
Saturday 1 October 2016 14.00 BST

When I made the shed 25 years ago it was a less politically trammelled time. [For Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, Parker blew up a garden shed and used the fragments for an installation]. I recently talked to the British army major who blew it up for me and he said it would be impossible to do now. The work becomes ever more pertinent though – explosions are increasingly ubiquitous. I made it with the backdrop of the IRA bombings and now we have a different kind of threat.

Being married to another artist [Texan painter Jeff McMillan] means never having to explain yourself. We’re involved in the same activity and that makes sense. Like Laura Trott and Jason Kenny – you don’t have to explain why you’re training 24 hours a day.

My father made me feel guilty for playing, for having time off. I was put to work on the smallholding that we had in Cheshire. I was well versed in killing chickens and helping animals give birth – piglets, calving. My father was a very controlling man and it was a big relief to get away from that.

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. At times I’ve been incapacitated by anxiety and unhappiness. You really know what joy is if you have experienced the opposite.

Jeremy Corbyn makes me angry. He seems vain. He’s enjoying his moment at the expense of the Labour party whose future he is wilfully jeopardising. We, the British public, would love to have an opposition.

We’re going to be a drab little island if we don’t stop cutting funding for art education. Art in our schools is being sidelined.

Since becoming a mother [to Lily, 15], I have really focused on green issues. It would be a dereliction of duty not to.

Cornelia Parker, Hanging Fire (Suspected Arson), 1999

Art is generally a singular vision, but I often collaborate, working with all kinds of people. There’s a lot of challenging your own prejudices. What interests me is the friction between two things, the slippage of meaning.

When I visit art schools now there are almost no working-class students. There are no students on full grants like I was. My niece is studying textiles at Loughborough, her mother is a nurse and she’s racking up huge student debt. There is much more stress for students from low-income families.

There’s a lot more to being an artist now. It’s not just making the work, it’s mediating it as well. I recently worked with Vic Reeves on a programme about Dada. He and I responded to a bronze statue of Churchill and Roosevelt. We dressed them up in an irreverent Dadaist act and there has been a little controversy in the press about it. It seemed harmless, but our instant Twitter culture means everyone needs more and more fodder.

THE GUARDIAN

THIS MUCH I KNOW

Richard Dreyfuss / ‘When I die I want the chance to hit God in the face’ 
Miriam Margolyes / ‘I adore being Jewish but I’m not a believer in God’
Carlos Santana /  ‘War is not the answer’

Carlos Santana  / ‘You can get high on what’s within you’

Georgia May Jagger / ‘With modelling, sometimes you’re punky, other times girly and sweet’

Tom Jones  / I might have become a miner like my father 

Tom Jones / ‘Fame allows you to release things that were already in you. It’s like drink in that respect’

Donald Trump / This much I know / I think I like Prince Harry

Donovan / ‘The songs try to say important things with lightness’

Ann Widdecombe / "We're far too obsessed with sex"

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge / 'Pleasure is a weapon'

Kathleen Hanna / ‘I'm a punk rock stripper with sexual abuse counsellor training’

Courtney Barnett / ‘When I go into a house I have to look in all the cupboards’

Erdem Moralioğlu / ‘I’ve always been fascinated by the way women look’

Kim Cattrall / ‘For me, sex starts in the brain’
Kim Wilde / ‘I felt caged in by Kids in America’

Emma Donoghue / ‘I’ve ended up having a family as well as being a lesbian’
David Bailey / Les is more. Except for sex

David Bailey / Cockneys don´t cry

Val Kilmer / "I think heaven is a state of mind. As hell is."

Dita von Teese / The young Marilyn Monroe was a pretty girl in a sea of pretty girls

Priscilla Presley/ 'My fear is that people will forget about Elvis'

Portrait of the artist / Cornelia Parker / "I didn't make any money out of my art until I was in my 40s"

Cornelia Parker. Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

Portrait of the artist

Cornelia Parker

Artist 

Artist Cornelia Parker talks about growing up on a smallholding, stringing up Rodin, and why Michael Gove should heed her words

"I didn't make any money out of my art until I was in my 40s"

Interview by Laura Barnett

Tuesday 17 December 2013 18.11 GMT

Cornelia Parker

What first drew you to art?

I was very physical as a child – we lived on a smallholding, and I was always outside making mud pies, or building structures up trees. But mostly, I had to help my father, so the idea of sneaking off to play was quite clandestine.

When did you decide to become an artist?

On a school trip to London when I was 15. We went for a week, and the whole world of art opened up: I'd never even been to a museum before. Having spent my childhood working hard, the idea that I might spend my adulthood playing began to seem quite attractive.

What have you sacrificed for your art?

A lot, financially. I didn't make any money out of my art until I was in my 40s, but it preserved my sanity and my freedom.

Which of your works are you most proud of?

My exploded shed (1), because it's the most well-known and well-loved. And wrapping up Rodin's The Kiss with string (2). I got a lot of flak for it, but for me it was about progressing my understanding of sculpture. And I've just cast some paving cracks in bronze, which I'm very happy with. I'm trying not to go through that midlife dip that artists tend to have.

Which artists do you most admire?

Bruce Nauman. He's such a polymath – he works in lots of different ways, from video to sculpture to neon. And he was one of the first artists, after Duchamp, to work with negative space (3), like the undersides of chairs.

What's the biggest myth about being an artist?

That we're frivolous, and that art is an add-on: something that's not important for society. Art and creativity are crucial, whether you're a mathematician, a scientist or an artist. Take note, Michael Gove.

Is there any truth in the old saying that art is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration?

Yes, most probably. But that one per cent is the most important thing.

What work of art would you like to own?

A Van Gogh drawing. I love looking at the thousands of tiny little lines in each one. They can make me cry.

What's the worst thing anyone ever said about you?

That I was vain and stupid. That was James Fenton, I think (4), talking about me wrapping up Rodin's The Kiss. It seemed a bit much.

What one song would work as the soundtrack to your life?

A Bob Dylan track. I like the fact that his music's very political, but doesn't sign you up to any one cause. That way it provides anthems for every generation.

Is there an art form you don't relate to?

No, I don't think so. I love it all.

In short

Born: Cheshire, 1956

Career: Studied at Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, Wolverhampton Polytechnic and Reading University. Work encompasses large-scale installations, sculpture and performance pieces. Showing at The Edge of Painting at the Piper Gallery, London W1, until 30 December. Details: thepipergallery.com.

Low point: "A fallow period about six years ago, after my parents died."

High point: "Being nominated for the Turner in 1997, and going on Desert Island Discs (5)."

Footnotes

(1) Cold Dark Matter (1991) consists of a garden shed that Parker had exploded by the British Army. 

(2) For this 2003 work, Parker had Rodin's sculpture shipped from Paris and spent a week winding a mile-long piece of string around it. 

(3) Between 1965 and 1968, Nauman produced a sculpture called A Cast of the Space Under My Chair. 

(4) Fenton called her "arrogant, vacuous, self-important and without the excuse of youth". 

(5) Among her choices were tracks by Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan and Wim Mertens. 

THE GUARDIAN

KISS

Portrait of the artist / Liz Lochhead / "Do better next time"

Portrait of the artist / John Cooper Clarke / At heart, I'm just a frustrated playboy

Portrait of the artist / Alice Oswald / 'As a child, I wrote in a little notebook I hid in a bush'
Portrait of the artist / Lemn Sissay / 'An artist doesn't need to suffer to create'

DRAGON

001 Portrait of the artist / Will Alsop / 'I've learned never to trust anyone with big feet and a small head'

Portrait of the artist / Jane Birkin / 'I was at the wrong audition, but Graham Greene still gave me my big break'

Portrait of the artist / Vanessa Paradis/ 'I was only a teenager when I started out in the music industry. I didn't look my best'

Portrait of the artist / Siri Hustvedt / 'I don't read reviews'

Portrait of the artist / Michael Rosen / 'Kids don't get the chance to enjoy poetry'

Portrait of the artist / Sebastião Salgado / 'I looked through a lens and ended up abandoning everything else'

Portrait of the artist / Kristin Scott Thomas / The English Patient or Four Weddings

Portrait of the artist / Margaret Drabble / "I think about Shakespeare every day"

Portrait of the artist / Cornelia Parker / "I didn't make any money out of my art until I was in my 40s"