Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Cornelia Parker's Room for Margins Series (after Turner)

Cornelia Parker
Room for Margins
from A River Seen from a Hillcirca 1840, by J.M.W. Turner
1998
canvas lining with ingrained dust and ink
Tate Gallery

J.M.W. Turner
A River Seen from a Hill
circa 1840-45
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Cornelia Parker
Room for Margins
from Rough Seacirca 1840-45, by J.M.W. Turner
1998
canvas tacking edges with ingrained dust
Tate Gallery

J.M.W. Turner
Rough Sea
circa 1840-45
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

"Room for Margins became part of Tate's collection under highly individual circumstances.  It was first conceived as a temporary installation for Cornelia Parker's 1998 exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery using archive material lent from Tate's conservation department.  It comprises six canvas liners and five sets of canvas tacking edges, all removed by conservators in the 1950s and 1960s, due to their deteriorating condition, from paintings by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) in Tate's collection.  A canvas liner is an unprimed canvas placed over a stretcher before attaching the primed canvas on which the artist has painted.  This is done to protect the back of the painted canvas and to help keep it flat.  Tacking edges are the parts of the canvas which have been folded around the back of the stretcher.  Parker first saw the liners and edges in Tate conservation in February 1998 and was intrigued by their fragile beauty.  Each liner bears water damage or tearing, and variations in tone and texture reveal the 'ghosted' image of the stretcher, occasionally with the imprint of the cross-brace visible.  In Parker's work, each piece is displayed with an adjacent label citing the Turner painting from which it had been removed.  The liners act as 'physical stand-ins' or metaphors for 'removal', their deteriorated state an eerie reminder of the vulnerability of works of art and the threat of physical loss.  Moreover, Parker's individual framing of each canvas stresses the beauty and power of the liners as visual objects in their own right."

Cornelia Parker
Room for Margins
from Venetian Scenecirca 1840-45, by J.M.W. Turner
1998
canvas lining with ingrained dust and ink
Tate Gallery

J.M.W. Turner
Venetian Scene
circa 1840-45
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Cornelia Parker
Room for Margins
from Rough Sea with Wreckagecirca 1830-35, by J.M.W. Turner
1998
canvas tacking edges with ingrained dust
Tate Gallery

J.M.W. Turner
Rough Sea with Wreckage
circa 1840-45
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

"Although they have research value as historical items, the liners and tacking edges are classified as residual or support material.  Therefore, unlike the 'originals' from which they were removed, they were never accessioned into Tate's collection.  By displaying them as a work authored by herself, Parker sought to question that classification and reveal it as arbitrary.  The subsequent accessioning of the liners and edges in the form of the installation Room for Margins into Tate Collection adds to this meaning, effecting the shift in their status from temporary to permanent, from secondary to original material.  Although the eleven pieces are regarded as part of a single installation, they can also be exhibited in smaller groups of no fewer than five."

Cornelia Parker
Room for Margins
from The Tenth Plague of Egypt, exhibited 1802, by J.M.W. Turner
1998-
canvas tacking edges with ingrained dust
Tate Gallery

J.M.W. Turner
The Tenth Plague of Egypt
 exhibited 1802
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Cornelia Parker
Room for Margins
from Chichester Canal, circa 1828, by J.M.W. Turner
1998
canvas tacking edges with ingrained dust
Tate Gallery

J.M.W. Turner
Chichester Canal
 circa 1828
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

"Room for Margins recalls Parker's longstanding fascination with the positive and negative values that we attribute to materials and the arbitrary basis by which we ascribe them.  Her interest in reclaiming the 'waste' or 'disposable' counterparts to products of worth similarly informs her 1996 work Negatives of Sound (Frith Street Gallery), which comprises the black lacquer excreted during the process of cutting grooves into a vinyl record.  This strategy of transforming a material's status without enacting any physical change to it provides an interesting complement to Parker's more familiar practice of transforming the value of an object or material through the use of extreme physical force."

Cornelia Parker
Room for Margins
from Scene in Venice, circa 1840-45, by J.M.W. Turner
1998-
canvas lining with ingrained dust and ink
Tate Gallery

J.M.W. Turner
Scene in Venice
circa 1840-45
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

– quoted passages from curator's notes at the Tate Gallery, London