Nocturne (A Moon Landing) was a firework display that marked the opening of Jupiter Artland as a public sculpture park. The fireworks incorporated an actual lunar meteorite so that pieces of the moon were scattered on the grounds of Jupiter Artland. Nocturne (A Moon Landing) took place on the eve of the full moon on the 9 May 2009 and was part of an ongoing series of Moon Landings made by Parker.

The firework display was inspired by Whistler’s Nocturne in Black and Gold The Falling Rocket (1875) – a depiction of a firework-strewn sky much criticised by John Ruskin, who likened it to ‘flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’ – and Claude Debussy’s musical Nocturnes, which in their turn had been inspired by Whistler. Parker collaborated with the pyrotechnician Daryl Fleming to create a display that evoked the mood of Whistler’s painting.

Nocturne (A Moon Landing) was commemorated by an additional artwork made by Parker, titled Moon Lands on Jupiter. Alongside these two artworks, Jupiter Artland’s permanent collection also includes Parker’s site-specific Landscape with Gun and Tree.

‘The opening of the sculpture park took place on the night of the full Moon and an audience of 500 were there to witness the event. The twelve-minute firework display started serenely after sunset, building slowly through three movements to a very dramatic finale. After the performance was finished and the lunar rock had landed, the crowds slowly dispersed and the Moon rose.’ 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.