A Pair of Glasses

Location

Country: Singapore
City: Singapore
Place: British High Commission

Two smoked clear drinking glasses lie centred flat on a white ground, facing opposite sides. Their feet do not exactly align which indicates that these are two distinct objects, rather than a reflected image. This print was made by Cornelia Parker to mark and celebrate twenty years of Ingrid Swenson’s tenure as director of PEER and her MBE Award for Services to the Arts in East London. The idea of mirrored and duplicated imagery has previously been explored by Parker in her work Rorschach series, of which the Government Art Collections owns Rorschach (Endless Column III) (2006). The artist invites us to make our own interpretation of a visual experience to see the poetry in the everyday and the elusive connections between things. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997 and awarded an OBE in 2010 for services to British art.

Cornelia Parker RA (b. 1956) lives and works in London. One of Britain’s most celebrated artists, she works across sculpture, installation, embroidery, drawing, photography and film to investigate processes of transformation and suspension and to explore the times in which we live. Parker has presented numerous major commissions and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, notably at Tate Britain (2022), the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (2019), Westminster Hall, Palace of Westminster (2017) and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2016). In 2010, Parker was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts and made an OBE. She received a CBE in 2022. In 2017, she was appointed as the first female Election Artist for the United Kingdom General Election. Her works are held in public and private collections around the world, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Fundación “la Caixa” in Barcelona, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Places

Subjects

domestic objects, kitchen objects, glass, shadow

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), process intaglio print, photogravure, polymer photogravure, cotton paper, 250 gsm Fabriano Tiepolo paper

Artist

Cornelia Parker (1956 - )

Title

A Pair of Glasses

Edition

Number 28 in an edition of 50 plus 5 artist's proofs

Date

2018

Medium

photogravure on paper

Dimensions

height: 28.8 cm; width: 39.6 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from PEER, January 2020

Inscription

recto: inscribed by the artist 'Cornelia Parker', bottom right; '28/50' bottom left

Provenance

PEER, London UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 8 January 2020

GAC number

18852