Cornelia Parker: Room for Margins

Work by Cornelia Parker using canvas liners and tracking taken from works by JMW Turner to create new work. These fragments were removed by conservators repairing Turner’s canvases in the 1960s. According to most writings about these works, Parker is highlighting the fragility and vulnerability of historical artworks. The pieces also bear the marks of time, such as water marks from a flood in 1928 that damaged works at the Tate Gallery Millbank site. In some ways these could be read as a palimpsest, layers of meaning and events accumulated over time, like geological layers in rock strata.

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