One Day This Glass Will Break

Cornelia Parker is one of Britain’s leading contemporary artists. Best known for large-scale installation and sculpture, her diverse practice also includes drawing, photography, film and printmaking.

'One Day This Glass Will Break', is an exhibition of twenty large-scale photogravures from three experimental series: Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass (2017); One Day This Glass Will Break (2015) and Thirty Pieces of Silver (exposed) (2015). Investigating the possibilities of photogravure, the three series, which are brought together for the first time in this exhibition, explore the artist’s fascination with the physical properties of objects, materials and their histories.

Photogravure is a printmaking process developed in the 1850s that produces etchings with the tone and detail of a photograph through the exposure of a photographic positive film onto a copper plate.  The works in the three series capture the shadows of translucent objects - each one a spectral still life of found objects including early glassware, a shattered lightbulb and melting ice cubes.

A Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition from Southbank Centre, London

Cornelia Parker, Black Ice, from: One Day This Glass Will Break, 2015.
A series of polymer photogravure etchings on Fabriano Tiepolo Bianco 290 gsm paper.
Courtesy and © the artist and Alan Cristea Gallery, 2024.
Photo: FXP Photography, London, 2015

Cornelia Parker, Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass
(tagged glasses)
Cornelia Parker, Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass 
(bottoms up) , from: Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass, 
A set of nine polymer photogravure 
etchings on Fabriano Tiepolo Bianco 290 gsm 
paper. Courtesy and © the artist and Alan 
Cristea Gallery, 2024. Photo: FXP 
Photography, London, 2017.

    Making a Mark | Cristea Roberts Gallery
Podcast - Cornelia Parker discusses the works in the current exhibition from Hayward.

Additional Reading