Allegorical art installation finds its spiritual home

Blowing up a shed and squashing a brass band’s instruments aren’t the kind of things we normally associate with artists, but Cornelia Parker is anything but conventional.

The renowned British-born sculptor and artist has made her name through subverting our perception of objects and one of her most recognisable works – Thirty Pieces of Silver – goes on display in the nave of York St Mary’s from Saturday.

The work includes plates, spoons, candlesticks, trophies, cigarette cases, teapots and trombones, which Parker collected and then squashed with a steamroller. Thousands of flattened objects have been arranged into 30 disc-shaped groups and suspended from the roof of the former church by fine wires, so that they appear to hover.

The installation, which is on show until the end of October, is part of Art in Yorkshire – a year-long celebration of the visual arts in 19 galleries throughout Yorkshire, supported by the Tate. Thirty Pieces of Silver, part of the Tate’s collection, shows Parker’s fascination with metal and is the seventh installation to be displayed in the medieval church.

Parker created the work in 1989 and writing the following year in the British Art Show catalogue for the Hayward Gallery, London, she said: “Thirty Pieces of Silver is about materiality and then about anti-matter. In the gallery the ruined objects are ghostly, levitating just above the floor, waiting to be reassessed in the light of their transformation.

“The title, because of its biblical references, alludes to money, to betrayal, to death and resurrection: more simply it is a literal description of the piece.”

Parker is best known for her large-scale work focusing on everyday objects, usually made from silver, which she then crushes, explodes, melts or stretches, creating something new from the remnants.

Jennifer Alexander, assistant curator of fine art with York Museums Trust, says this particular piece has obvious religious connotations.

“Thirty Pieces of Silver is the payment Judas received for betraying Jesus, and other links to the story of the Last Supper can be found in the objects themselves such as cutlery and dinner plates.

“She got many of these things from car boot sales and junk shops and by changing their shape they become something else.

“Many of them were wedding gifts and on some of the plates, for instance, you can see the words ‘happy anniversary’ and you realise that at one time they meant a lot to someone and now here they are, reborn.”

Thirty Pieces of Silver at York St Mary’s runs from May 28 to October 30.

Her dark materials

Cornelia Parker was born in Cheshire in 1956.

Her art revolves around transforming ordinary objects into something new. Her breakthrough work, Cold Dark Matter, involved having a shed detonated by the Royal Artillery.

Parker was shortlisted for the Turner prize in 1997.

Last year she was awarded an OBE.