The enthralling Cornelia Parker survey now open at Tate Britain is about 20 years overdue – but far better late than never. At 65, with her poetic and highly original imagination, Parker has made enough masterpieces to fill a full-scale retrospective and even spill out into the surrounding galleries.
The show opens with the radiant Thirty Pieces of Silver, hanging spotlit in darkness. Thirty flattened settings, each made of 30 pieces of Edwardian silver, each teapot, plate and cake fork now resembling the charm in some nostalgic Christmas pudding. Everything is hanging by a thread, only inches from the ground, bright emblems of a Downton grandeur in freefall.
