Her Dark Materials, or why I love Cornelia Parker's Cold Dark Matter.

I was sifting my postcard collection for wall objects, the things I cover the area behind my PC with whilst working, at the weekend. Amongst the various stuff, I found a postcard of Cornelia Parker's Cold Dark Matter. The installation is in a room apart and is the exploded remains of a junk-filled garden shed, rearranged on hundreds of wires as if the explosion has paused. Within it, a single naked bulb lights the exhibition space and casts shadows.

This is one of those pieces I can return to again and again, and have done. It has so many dichotomies caught up within it: the harshness and violence against the fragility. The way the blasted fragments hang in space, twirling and spinning on their wires. The suggestion that time has frozen, yet the awareness of those slight movements of the pieces. The exploded room within the solidity of the exhibition room. The mundanity of a garden shed of junk next to the concept of the universal Dark Matter no one can never actually find. Or a physical model of a Big Bang. At a base level, it appeals because of the shadow play, the chiaroscuro of it. There's something elusive to it, hence my frequent returns to view it again. I'd like to think it's because there is something fundemental to the questions and allusions it raises.

Next week: why I think Constable is pants.