Landscape with Gun and Tree is a nine-metre-tall shotgun that leans against a tree, by artist Cornelia Parker. The gun is made of cast iron and corten steel, and so – like any metal left out in the rain overnight – it continues to rust over time.

Landscape with Gun and Tree is a sculptural representation of a hunting shotgun, scaled up to rival the height of the surrounding trees. Parker took inspiration from Thomas Gainsborough’s painting Mr and Mrs Andrews (c.1750) which shows a newly married couple posed with their country estate stretching into the distance behind them. Mrs Andrews sits on a garden bench, her hands (unfinished) on her lap. Mr Andrews stands behind her, his gun over his arm, their dog at their feet. Parker had toyed with the idea of calling her sculpture Mr and Mrs Wilson, acknowledging that the work is a portrait of Jupiter Artland’s Founders, materialised as the shotgun and tree respectively. On seeing the finished installation, the artist renamed the work Landscape with Gun and Tree – a suitable nod to other Gainsborough titles.

The sculpture is designed in such a way that if the tree that it leans on was to fall, it would remain standing upright, its weight supported by engineering under the ground. A perverse monument to firearms and man’s battle with nature, Parker’s work intimates power, ownership and violence, albeit in a humorous manner.

Alongside Landscape with Gun and Tree, Jupiter Artland’s permanent collection includes two other artworks by Parker: Nocturne, A Moon Landing and Moon Lands on Jupiter.

‘After the poetry of Nocturne (A Moon Landing), I wanted to make something that was much more confrontational, perhaps even inspiring fear… I quite like the idea of a poacher trespassing on the land being alarmed by the scale of the abandoned firearm and conjuring a mental picture of the absent gamekeeper.’ Cornelia Parker

Biography

Cornelia Parker CBE was born in Cheshire, England in 1956. She studied at Gloucester College of Art (1974–5), Wolverhampton Polytechnic (1975–8) and Reading University (1980–2). She is well known for her large scale, often site specific, installations. Always driven by curiosity, she reconfigures domestic objects to question our relationship with the world. Using transformation, playfulness and storytelling, she engages with important issues of our time, be it violence, ecology or human rights.

Her engagement with the fragility of existence and the transformation of matter is exemplified in works such as Dark Matter, a reconstruction of an exploded army shed, and Heart of Darkness, the formal arrangement of charred remains from a forest fire. There is an apocalyptic tone to much of her work but she also demonstrates a concern with the more insidious effects of global warming and consumerism. Her work contains elements beyond human control, taking the volatile and making it into something that is quiet and contemplative like the ‘eye of the storm’. Through a combination of visual and verbal allusions her work triggers cultural metaphors and personal associations, which allow the viewer to witness the transformation of the most ordinary objects into something compelling and extraordinary.

Parker was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997. A major survey exhibition of her work opened at Tate Britain in May 2022. Her notable solo exhibitions include Ikon, Birmingham; Tokyo’s National Art Centre; Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin; ICA, Philadelphia; Aspen Museum of Art, Colorado; Chicago Arts Club and the ICA, Boston. Parker’s work is represented in many international collections including The Arts Council of England, Tate Gallery, London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Parker was Honorary Professor at the University of Manchester 2015-2018 and from 2016–19 was Visiting Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. She was appointed Honorary Fellow at Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 2020. She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2010 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to the Arts in The Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours List 2022.