BATH.- No.1 Royal Crescent presents Handle with Care: Cornelia Parker & Historic Glass, an exhibition that looks through the eyes of one of Britain’s most acclaimed contemporary artists, Cornelia Parker, at the historic glass and found objects that inspire her work and artistic process.

This exhibition juxtaposes Cornelia Parker’s series One Day This Glass Will Break (2015); Thirty Pieces of Silver (exposed) (2015); Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass (2017) and Through a Glass Darkly (2020) with Georgian historic glass. The show explores Parker’s enduring fascination with the histories of objects and materials by pairing her photogravures of light and shadow cast by glassware with the historic artefacts that inspired them. This dialogue invites visitors to consider how these familiar forms, as Parker notes, “descend from their shelves and create new compositions” within her prints.

Inspired by 19th century photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot’s ground-breaking photographs and photogravure technique, Parker has created a hybrid technique by placing actual glassware onto an etching plate treated with a light sensitive emulsion, which captures the objects’ shadows when exposed to ultraviolet light. In doing so she transforms the once familiar items into something very unfamiliar. This process is part of Parker’s career-long fascination with taking the recognisable, and pushing it to a point of abstraction. This slow, contemplative method of printing creates an effect on some of the monochrome prints that is almost painterly, as items blur in and out of focus.

The exhibition displays photogravure etchings from Parker’s Fox Talbot’s Articles of Glass, 2017 series, which depict the original glassware owned by Talbot, who lived locally in Lacock, Wiltshire and often visited Bath. Parker’s monochrome and mysterious images will surround numerous rare examples of historic Georgian glass from the collections of No.1 Royal Crescent, The Victoria Art Gallery and the Holburne Museum, domestic objects intrinsically linked to its owners and manufacturers and Bath’s local history.

Patrizia Ribul, Director of Museums at Bath Preservation Trust, which operates No.1 Royal Crescent, said: “We are thrilled to bring Cornelia Parker’s vivid metamorphic art to Bath. By showing Cornelia Parker’s work alongside local Georgian glassware, we can trace a story that runs from the everyday life of Georgian Bath’s residents, through the pioneering experiments of Fox Talbot, to Parker’s inventive and extraordinary reinterpretations today.

“The new Cornelia Parker exhibition is the latest in a series of captivating exhibitions, each blending historic and contemporary elements. Handle with Care will carry forward this tradition of linking past and present - though refracted through Parker’s striking and imaginative methods.”

Cornelia Parker was born in Cheshire, England, in 1956. She studied at the Gloucestershire College of Art & Design and at Wolverhampton Polytechnic before receiving her MA in Fine Art from the University of Reading in 1982.

Parker's art is about destruction, resurrection and reconfiguration. Demonstrating the importance of process, she frequently transforms objects by using seemingly violent techniques such as shooting, exploding, squashing, cutting and burning. Through these actions she both physically alters the object and she herself becomes an active participant in the development of its story.

Her first major solo exhibition, Thirty Pieces of Silver, took place at the Ikon Gallery, Birmingham in 1988. Since then she has gone on to exhibit all over the world. Recent solo exhibitions include Kindl, Berlin (2025); Tate Britain, London (2022); Cristea Roberts Gallery, London (2020); Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2019); The Palace of Westminster, London (2018); Hayward touring exhibition, UK (2018/19); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2016); Whitworth Gallery, Manchester (2015); Terrace Wires Commission, St Pancras International Station, London (2015); British Library, London, touring to Whitworth Gallery, Manchester and Bodleian Library, Oxford (2015); Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2014).

Parker's work is held in numerous collections worldwide including Tate, London; British Council, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Fundacio La Caixa, Barcelona; Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Yale Center for British Art, Connecticut.

In 1997 she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. In 2010 she was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts, London and appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire. Parker was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the Arts in the Queen’s Jubilee Birthday Honours List 2022. She was the UK's official Election Artist for the 2017 general election, making several artworks that are now housed in The Parliamentary Art Collection. In 2023 Parker was commissioned by the UK Government Art Collection to create works in response to Coronation of King Charles III.

Cristea Roberts Gallery has been publishing Parker's prints since 2008. Cornelia Parker lives and works in London.