Moon Lands on Jupiter is a plaque, situated in Jupiter Artland’s ha-ha (a recessed boundary wall), that commemorates Parker’s Nocturne (A Moon Landing), a firework display that incorporated parts of a lunar meteorite, so that pieces of the moon were scattered on the grounds of Jupiter Artland.

The artwork was designed to mimic the appearance of an English National Trust sign. The traditional National Trust sign is usually silver with black writing, featuring a cluster of green oak leaves as a motif. Using the same sign makers, Parker reversed their imagery, creating a black plaque with silver letters that bears an image of a full moon.

‘The lunar meteorite that fell from the sky is still there somewhere on the land, but so small that no one could distinguish it from the other bits of matter making up the terrain. Children are often to be seen picking up various pieces of rock and asking their parents is this a piece of the Moon?’ Cornelia Parker

Alongside Moon Lands on Jupiter and Nocturne (A Moon Landing) , Jupiter Artland’s permanent collection includes another artwork by Parker titled Landscape with Gun and Tree.

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.