Frith Street Gallery, Golden Square and Soho Square, London
Parker depicts the US presidential race as Halloween nightmare. What will she make of the General Election?
Last week, Cornelia Parker was named official artist for the forthcoming election. Who knew such preferments existed? Her job, over the next month, is to produce work “about” the election which will then be quietly filed away in the parliamentary art collection, if the last few appointments – figurative artists David Godbold, Jonathan Yeo and Adam Dant, and photographer Simon Roberts– are anything to go by. Is Parker even interested in politics?
Indubitably so, at least in the subtlest of senses. Almost everything she makes – from the emblematic potting shed blown to smithereens by the British army to the Edwardian silver service, every dish flattened until it resembles the Christmas pudding charms of nostalgic bygones – is some form of social critique. And now she is showing work, in both Frith Street Gallery sites, that doesn’t just dwell on our shifting history but is explicitly concerned with politics.
Related: Cornelia Parker: ‘I don’t want to tick anyone else’s boxes’
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