Marking 25 years since her 1991 exhibition Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, Parker's edition is the inaugural artwork in the Anniversary Editions 2016 series. Widely considered her breakthrough show, Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View remains one of Parker's most celebrated works to date. The installation consisted of a garden shed and its miscellaneous domestic contents, which had been blown up by the British Army at the artist's request. After this brutal yet controlled act, the altered objects were suspended in a state of collective flux. Encircling a single light bulb, the constellation of debris created a dramatic shadow play on the surrounding gallery walls. For Parker, the garden shed represented a “reservoir of stuff,” operating as a metaphor for psychological baggage. The explosion formalised Parker's emotional investigation, causing a devastating transformation of the physical objects. This act, at once destructive and productive, referenced the cosmological theory of the Big Bang.

Parker's Anniversary Edition comprises three black and white photographs of domestic objects: a hot water bottle, a sun parasol and a record player. The images, each depicting a component of Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, have been carefully selected by the artist. The original photographs were shot by Hugo Glendinning, in order to document the process of producing the work. They were taken at Chisenhale Gallery prior to the elements being suspended in the final presentation of the piece, serving as an inventory of the blown-up contents of the shed. For Parker, these photographs resonate with both past and present conflict. Like iconic war photography, these images have a timeless quality, depicting not one explosion but the universal idea of an explosion.

Courtesy of Chisenhale Gallery