War Machine

FLAG is filmed in a factory in Cardiff that makes Union Jacks. “We filmed them making one from beginning to end and then we run it backwards. They take the flag apart piece by piece, as the hymn Jerusalem plays in the background. I suppose it’s sympathetic magic – to stop the Union Jack getting dismembered into four countries following Brexit.”

In 2017, Cornelia Parker became the UK’s first female official Election Artist. She followed the campaigns with daily observations in over 1,500 images and films on her Instagram feed, which turned into Election Abstract.

The four-channel projection American Gothic, shot on iPhones in New York in October 2016, focuses on the street Halloween celebrations and a rally outside Trump Tower a few days before Donald Trump’s election.

Left, Right and Centre shows the interior of the House of Commons during the 2017 election campaign. Newspapers are piled on the benches and blow around the chamber when they are caught in an unexpected breeze. Headlines charting polarised opinions across the political spectrum are seen clashing and scattering amid the general mess and chaos. The work was filmed in darkness at night and in daylight the following day, using two cameras, a drone and a wind machine. One camera acts as passive observer and the other (on the drone) acts as an agitator that disrupts the familiar space.

Made in Bethlehem is a subtle response to the complexities of politics in the Middle East. On a visit to Palestine just before Easter in 2012, Parker filmed a Muslim man, Muhammad Hussein Ba-our and his son weaving crowns of thorns for Christian pilgrims.

A spotlight tracks around a statue of Margaret Thatcher that stands in the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. The light casts the elongated and enlarged shadow of the ex-prime minister’s arm and pointing finger on the walls about it.