Light from the North
Light from the North: Through a Glass Darkly series, 2020, Cornelia Parker, etching REDMG: 2021.9.1, Reading Foundation for Art collection. Copyright: the artist. Photo: Reading Museum, Reading Borough Council
Cornelia Parker is one of the best known sculptors and printmakers in the UK today.
Part of a series of prints called Through a Glass Darkly, which is an enigmatic quote from the Bible (Corinthians 13:12) about how we see reality imperfectly, but all will become clear at the end of time.
Parker makes mysterious prints by capturing the shadows cast by objects, particularly semi-transparent ones. Her unusual technique, ‘photogravure’, was developed by the nineteenth century photographer Henry Fox Talbot, who had a studio in Reading. To make this, drinking glasses were placed on a chemically-coated copper printing plate.
The patterns and shading were created by shining ultraviolet light through them onto the plate, which was then processed to make an etching. Where a glass was in contact with the plate it left a sharply defined black outline. Where its shadow fell the impression is softer but equally dark.
