Some hair-raising memories were being aired at the Chisenhale Gallery’s annual patrons’ party on Monday night (19 September), which this year was held at the Knightsbridge residence of the Brazilian collector and patron Frances Reynolds. The event was to mark both the opening of Peter Wächtler’s new show at the gallery and also the 25th anniversary of Chisenhale’s commissioning and exhibiting of Cornelia Parker’s magnum opus Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991)—AKA the exploded shed—which now resides safely in the Tate’s collection. But, as the artist revealed, it could have had a very different fate.
Nicholas Serota and the then Chisenhale, now Ikon, director Jonathan Watkins almost choked into their drinks as Parker regaled them—and your correspondent—with the tale of how the work’s incendiary beginnings were nearly matched by a dramatically fiery demise. At the end of the exhibition’s run, on 5 November 1991, she had to take the piece back to her Leytonstone home to store it. In those more rough-and-ready times there was no budget for white-gloved art handling, and Parker had tied the larger chunks of wooden shed onto the roof of her small and dilapidated car. Unfortunately, she then ran out of petrol in the middle of Victoria Park in east London and, on returning with a spare can, was just in time to fend off a crowd of local children who had designs on her enticing bundle to fuel that evening’s festive bonfire. But then, considering Momart’s famous storage fire which took place only a few streets away a decade or so later, perhaps professional handlers are not always the safest option…
