Good afternoon everyone,

I went to see the Cornelia Parker exhibition at the Tate Britain last weekend, and you should definitely go too if you can make it to the Tate in time - it closes on Sunday. I went in not knowing a lot about Cornelia Parker other than that she did "found objects," which is cool, but I didn't realise how weird the found objects were going to be. Like, stuff that she found and asked to keep from… UK Customs and Excise. The Royal Mint. Gun factories. It's really good! Here's an exploded shed:

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/cornelia-parker

Here's an interview where she talks about one of my favourite pieces in the show, a cast of pavement cracks from Bunhill Fields:

Walking her 11-year-old daughter to school, she began to notice the cracks in the pavement. "I passed these same bumps and divots every day and actually got to know them quite intimately. And cracks in the pavement are kind of worrying. Kids get obsessed about not stepping on them. I did. My mother was German and I was brought up with Struwwelpeter stories, which are invested with all sorts of horrors waiting for you if you do the wrong thing. There is a lot of anxiety that gets welded into your psyche early on and pavement cracks are one of those, so I quite liked the idea of making them into an actual obstacle."

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/may/18/cornelia-parker-interview

Of course, she's not the only woman found object innovator - here is an article about the theory that Fountain, widely attributed to Duchamp, was actually by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, baroness and modernist:

The answer to the question of who had been responsible for Mutt’s urinal’s journey from Philadelphia to the Grand Central Palace via 110 West 88th Street lies in the printing and the handwriting. The first in one hand, the second in another. They were in fact from the hands of two women. The first woman has been marginalized in art history, while the second has remained completely anonymous. One of the women who may have actually created the artwork was Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. She was a resident at the time in Philadelphia, when according to the two leading critics of modern art in New York—Gustav Kobbé of the Herald and Henry McBride of the Sun—the fictitious hoaxer Mutt had sent the urinal to the exhibition venue via 110 West 88th street. This explains the two different hands: the first done in Philadelphia by Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, and the second in New York by somebody else.

https://untappedcities.com/2021/06/14/duchamp-fountain-urinal/

Love,

Alex.