Cornelia Parker

Cornelia Parker

Author: BBC Radio 4 February 16, 2003 Duration: 33:58
Desert Island Discs: Archive 2000-2005
SocietySociety & CultureCultureJournalsPersonal

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the artist Cornelia Parker. Cornelia grew up in the country where she lived on a small holding looked after by her father. She spent much of her time mucking out pigs, milking cows, laying hedges and tying up tomato plants. Her means of escape was to run into the fields to daydream. English and art were her favourite subjects, and a trip to the Tate Gallery in London with her school when she was aged 15 confirmed that she wanted to be an artist. After studying art at college, Cornelia turned her hand to sculpture, inspired by the Arte Povera movement in Italy which rejected traditional marble and bronze and used any materials they chose. She developed her style by mixing with other students and collaborating with theatre groups.

Cornelia liked the idea of her work being ephemeral and didn't worry about it's existence beyond an exhibition. For her first solo exhibition in 1980 she showed a number of pieces and because she had nowhere to store them, told the organisers that afterwards they could give them to local schools. "I don't know what they did with them!" she says. After a car accident in 1994 Cornelia began to realise the importance of keeping some of her work and she began to be represented by a gallery. She broadened her collaborations - for her piece Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View she got the British Army to blow up a shed so that she could hang it back together again, suspended around a lightbulb. For her piece Wedding Ring Drawing she employed a silversmith who could draw a gold wedding ring into a very fine thread. In 1995 she worked with the actress Tilda Swinton on a project The Maybe, which included Tilda herself exhibited in a glass case. In 1997 Cornelia was nominated for the Turner Prize for her work.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Cry Baby by Janis Joplin Book: World of Wonder: 10,000 things every child should know by Charles Ray Luxury: A solar-powered vibrator


The Desert Island Discs: Archive 2000-2005 podcast opens a unique window into a pivotal era, drawing from the BBC Radio 4 archives. This isn't just a collection of interviews about music; it's a deeply personal exploration of life, ambition, and memory through the voices of the early 21st century. Each episode presents a guest from this period-be they an artist, a politician, a scientist, or an activist-facing the program's enduring and revealing premise: selecting the eight pieces of music they would take if stranded alone. The conversation that unfolds around these choices is where the magic happens. The host gently guides them from their selections into stories of childhood influences, career-defining moments, personal triumphs, and profound losses. You'll hear the crackle of a vinyl record lead into a confession, or a symphony cue a tale of resilience. Listening to this podcast feels like uncovering a time capsule of cultural and emotional history, where a pop song can explain a political stance and a classical adagio can frame a love story. It’s an intimate study of character and a testament to how the soundtrack of our lives shapes our identity. These archived conversations, preserved in this podcast, remain compelling because they bypass the superficial, using music as the key to unlock genuine human experience.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Official website RSS
Desert Island Discs: Archive 2000-2005
Podcast Episodes
P D James [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:28
P D James was born in Oxford, later moving to Ludlow on the Welsh Borders where she experienced a childhood which she says had more in common with a Victorian childhood than anything today. She was a well-behaved, quiet…
Carl Djerassi [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:17
Carl Djerassi was born in Vienna to an Austrian mother and Bulgarian father. Both parents were involved in the medical profession and, growing up surrounded by medical paraphernalia, he assumed that he would become a doc…
Paul Gambaccini [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 34:05
Paul Gambaccini was born in New York City in 1949 and revelled growing up to the sounds of the 1960s. He loved listening to the radio and chose to go to Dartmouth College in preference to Harvard or Yale because it had a…
Philip Pullman [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:00
Philip Pullman is the author of the celebrated His Dark Materials trilogy: Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. He was born in Norwich and spent his early years travelling all over the world with his…
Dame Alicia Markova [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 43:43
Dame Alicia Markova was born Lilian Alice Marks in December 1910, in a two-bedroom flat in Finsbury Park, London. She began ballet classes because she was flat footed and knock kneed. Her natural talent, when she was ten…
Timothy Spall [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 33:32
Timothy Spall grew up in Battersea, South London. He found school pretty uninspiring and left with art as his only qualification. However, when he played the part of the Cowardly Lion in the school production of The Wiza…
Brian May [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:55
Brian May spent his childhood in Feltham near London and he learnt his first chords on his father's ukelele banjo. He soon progressed to the guitar, which he started learning when he was eight. He perfected his technique…
Alan Titchmarsh [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 37:02
Alan Titchmarsh was drawn to gardening from an early age in Ilkley, Yorkshire, making his first polythene greenhouse at the age of twelve and deciding he was going to be a gardener when he grew up. He left school at fift…
Minette Walters [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:38
After Minette Walters' father died of injuries sustained in World War II she won a scholarship to Godolphin School, and eventually became Head Girl. From a young age she shunned girls' story books, preferring the more gr…

«1...678910