Cornelia Parker: Subconscious Of a Monument

Subconscious Of a Monument is a major installation by Cornelia Parker presented by Frith Street Gallery, London and D’Amelio Terras, New York at the Royal Institute for British Architects.

Cornelia Parker’s work explores the uncharted territories within those most visited places and ideas. By harnessing their aura and histories and using them as a material, she creates a new space for contemplation amidst the over familiar. In Parker’s hands, nothing is stable. Objects fall apart, collide, combust, explode or are compressed to remerge as new and surprisingly beautiful forms.

Subconscious of a Monument is composed of fragments of dry soil, which are suspended on wires from the gallery ceiling. These lumps are the now-desiccated clay which was removed from beneath the Leaning Tower of Pisa in order to prevent its collapse. There is an absurdity about removing the very earth that supports the foundations of a building to keep it standing and here the earth seems to have percolated upwards through the gallery floor and hangs like a ghostly molecular version of Walter de Maria’s Earth Room. The work highlights many of the concerns inherent in Parker’s practice from iconographic objects, places and buildings to a fascination with Freudian psychoanalysis.