Embryo Firearms 1995

Curator: Here we have Cornelia Parker’s ‘Embryo Firearms’ created in 1995. Editor: Cold. Terribly cold, both visually and in feeling. Curator: Indeed, that starkness is deliberate. Parker often plays with recognizable objects, transforming them to reveal hidden layers. These, of course, are assemblages crafted from metal. What strikes you about their production? Editor: Well, these aren’t just guns, are they? They're almost ghostly outlines, readymades of potential, like ghostly afterimages of power. I'm intrigued by the sharp edges, a machine cut precision. It hints at mass production, but in doing so, diminishes the specific and foregrounds industry. Do you see it like this? Curator: Mass production but in its elemental stages of potential. The void in each emphasizes this absence, this idea. I find a poetic tension between the solid metal and the hollowness they represent. It’s a kind of violence-as-concept rather than violence-as-action, which hits deeper somehow. Editor: Precisely, we are dealing with potentiality made manifest. So much implied pressure. Did she manipulate these forms a lot or take advantage of ready availability and existing machining? That really informs how I’d frame it: appropriation versus heavy material handling. Curator: I understand your distinction, though with Parker I feel she dances between. There's selection involved, decisions about placement, juxtaposition, all which impart meaning and emotion. Each piece, each firearm suggests something unfulfilled and latent. Editor: Ah, 'latent' is such a great word for it! Thinking about her choice of material-- the weight and the coldness communicate such an intent. Were these cold-worked, heat-treated, I wonder? Curator: Questions for another time! But what I will say, these "Embryo Firearms" force us to reflect, don't they, on the machinery of violence itself, made strangely and uncomfortably…beautiful. Editor: Yes. There is a chilling allure in their simplification, reducing tools of devastation to these suggestive, primal forms. A clever critique. Curator: Absolutely. Well put, I would say we did pretty well unearthing a discussion point there, wouldn't you? Editor: Quite a productive pairing, wouldn't you agree?