Viewing Room: Online
Cornelia Parker | Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass
17 April - 6 May 2023
Cornelia Parker is one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists. Best known for large-scale installation and sculpture, her diverse practice also includes drawing, photography, film, and printmaking.
For her series, Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass, Parker has made use of glassware originally belonging to Talbot that appears in his early famous photograph Articles of Glass (c.1844). Leaving many of the museum labels untouched, Parker has arranged the items in informal compositions. The high lead content of early glassware, which makes it less translucent than contemporary glass, has resulted in prints with strong shadows and rich, sumptuous tones.
Photogravure is a printmaking process developed in the 1850s that produces etchings with the tone and detail of a photograph through the exposure of a photographic positive film onto a copper plate. During her experiments in printmaking, Parker modified this technique by replacing photographic film with three-dimensional objects. This is very much in the manner of a ‘photogenic drawing’ -or photogram -developed by 19th century photographic pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot. Through her combination of two early photographic techniques, Parker has created a unique, hybrid form of printmaking.
