Thirty Pieces of Silver 1989

Editor: So, this is Cornelia Parker’s "Thirty Pieces of Silver," created in 1989. It's a sculpture made of crushed silver objects, suspended from the ceiling. It strikes me as both delicate and devastating. What’s your take on this, as you stand here? Curator: Devastating is a perfect word! Parker allows us to pause with the scattered fragments of what was once cherished—a trombone, cutlery, candlesticks. They hang, shimmering slightly, like ghostly memories. Each crushed form tells a story of destruction and, surprisingly, rebirth. Do you get a sense of the biblical reference in the title? Editor: Ah, Judas and his betrayal… so the shattered silver becomes a metaphor for betrayal, for broken promises, for something lost, irrecoverable? Curator: Precisely. The flattened, almost weightless quality also speaks to a certain loss of value, both material and emotional. I imagine her collecting these discarded objects – car boot sales, attics – each with its own history before it undergoes this violent transformation. Then she choreographs them within the gallery to offer this eerie meditation. Makes you consider what we value, doesn't it? And what gets discarded. Editor: It does. Thinking about the 'what gets discarded' bit especially makes the mundane room it inhabits sort of poignant. Curator: It's intentionally unsettling, that tension between the domestic-scaled silver and the almost industrial space in which it's installed. I think she asks us to consider destruction, not just as an end, but a kind of beginning, an echo even, in the very arrangement of objects. Editor: I hadn't thought of it as a beginning. Curator: Maybe that’s just me being optimistic! But isn’t it interesting how a single action, a violent smashing, can provoke so many thoughts and feelings? Editor: Definitely. I’ll never look at a silver spoon the same way again. Thank you!