Cornelia Parker | Folkestone Triennial

Triennial 2011 Artists Cornelia Parker

CORNELIA PARKER

TITLE: The Folkestone Mermaid

Location: end of the Stade, overlooking Sunny Sands beach

Born: 1956, Cheshire

Lives/Works: London

‘The Folkestone Mermaid’
Parker has created a Folkestone version of one of the most popular tourist attractions in the world, Copenhagen’s ‘Little Mermaid’. All women of Folkestone were offered the opportunity to model for the mermaid. Through a process of open submission, Parker chose Georgina Baker, mother
of two and Folkestone born and bred. Unlike the idealised Copenhagen version, this is a life-size, life-cast sculpture, celebrating the local and the everyday. Parker’s mermaid, a more confident and
knowing lady of the sea than Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale one, is a permanent work for Folkestone.

Parker has become known for her installations and interventions, including ‘Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View’ (1991), where she suspended the fragments of a garden shed, blown up for her by the British Army; and ‘The Maybe’, a collaboration with actress Tilda Swinton, at the Serpentine Gallery in 1995. She wrapped Rodin’s ‘The Kiss’ with a mile of a string to make a new work ‘The Distance (a kiss with string attached)’ for her contribution to the Tate Triennial (2003).

The video below shows footage from the making of The Folkestone Mermaid at the foundry at Meltdowns in Ramsgate.

Interview with Cornelia Parker
Cornelia Parker Interview by FT2011 Audio

Interview with Folkestone Mermaid model Georgina Baker
Georgina Baker Interview (The Folkestone Mermaid) by FT2011 Audio

Interview with Sarah Craske of Meltdowns Studio and Foundry
Sarah Craske Interview (Meltdowns Studios and Foundry) by FT2011 Audio

Recent solo exhibitions:

Baltic, Gateshead (2010)

D’Amelio Terras, New York (2010)

Whitechapel Gallery laboratory (2008)

Museo De Arte de Lima, Peru (2008)

Guy Bartschi, Geneva (2008)

Carles Taché, Barcelona (2008)

Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2007)