Artist Cornelia Parker goes flat out for her art. She tells CHARLES HUTCHINSON about the desperate need she once had for a steamroller.

CORNELIA Parker was facing a dilemma. It was the dark end of 1988 and she needed a steamroller. “But it wasn’t the right time of year; by then everyone had stripped down their steamroller for the winter,” she says.

“I contacted the Steamroller Society to see if anyone had a straight concrete road and a working steamroller, and luckily this chap had a breakers’ yard with a concrete road, although it turned out to be curved.”

Her pressing need for a roller was to squash 1,000 silver objects in the cause of art. She explained this and the man took it in his stride. “He’d once been in a Carry On film, dressed as a double for Barbara Windsor, driving a steamroller that flattened a bike,” says Cornelia, laughing at the memory. “He said he always loved squashing things and would be very happy to do it for me.”

Steamroller, Barbara Windsor, 1,000 objects in a Chorley Wood breakers’ yard, just where is this leading? The answer is Thirty Pieces Of Silver (1988-89), Cornelia Parker’s installation that is now hanging at York St Mary’s as part of the Art In Yorkshire series of exhibitions from the Tate Collection.

Former Turner Prize nominee Cornelia well remembers the flattening experience in 1988.

“When I got there with all my pieces and various friends, all these members of the Steamroller Society had turned up with their families and their sandwiches to watch, and though it wasn’t meant to be a piece of performance art, the steamroller squashing had a cartoon quality about it,” she says.

Cornelia had assembled discarded plates, spoons, candlesticks, tea pots, inscribed trophies, cigarette cases and even a trombone for re-shaping.

“A lot of the objects were so cheap that they disappeared into dust, even though it was only a ten-ton steamroller, and since then I’ve subjected silver-plated objects to 250 tonnes of pressure in bending machinery,” she says.

There is a serious point to this outwardly comical crushing, a symbolic death and renewal. “People donated unwanted wedding presents, as well as me going to auctions, car boot sales and junk shops, and collectively they met their death on the same day,” says Cornelia.

“Now I have resurrected them – suspended four or five inches above ground level on wire – as one unified whole, when previously they all had individual histories where they had been betrayed.”

Betrayed? “There were a few acts of betrayal in parting with them, especially those who gave their wedding presents away,” she says.

Betrayal links in with Judas Iscariot and his thirty pieces of silver, echoed by Cornelia arranging the flattened objects into 30 disc-shaped groups, whose cutlery and plates recall the Last Supper.

Premiered at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, Cornelia’s installation was first exhibited in London as part of the British Art Show at the Hayward Gallery in 1990.

Subsequently it has been acquired by the Tate Collection and has been shown at Tate Modern and Tate Britain, as well as in Brazil, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia and Nottingham and at the Serpentine Gallery in London.

York St Mary’s breaks new ground, being the first church building to have the 30 pieces suspended from its nave.

“I love how the work has its own life and when it’s shown in different contexts it has different significances, like when it was shown at the Bastille in Paris, it had connotations of the French Revolution. In York St Mary’s church, there’s the resonance of the pieces being suspended above gravestones. “That’s what you want with a piece like this, where items have been killed off and resurrected, and as a lapsed Catholic I enjoy that.”

The silver is given a “rudimentary rubdown” by staff before being suspended and then the elements start playing their part. “It’ll be interesting to see what the conditions in the church do to it. I like the silver being tarnished and how the oxidisation is a chemical reaction between the object and the world,” says Cornelia.

“I love the duality and the duplicity of the pieces; the installation has a Shakespearean feel to it: it has that lustre and yet sense of betrayal.”

• Cornelia Parker’s installation Thirty Pieces Of Silver (1988-89) hangs in the balance at York St Mary’s, Castlegate, York, until October 30 as part of Art In Yorkshire – Supported by Tate, a year-long celebration of the visual arts in 19 galleries throughout Yorkshire. Opening hours are 10am to 4pm daily; admission is free.

What’s next for Cornelia Parker?

“I’m just about to open my exhibit at the Folkstone Triennial on June 24,” she reveals. “I’ve made my first bronze: I’ve cast a local resident, aged 38, sitting in the nude, posing as the Little Mermaid of Copenhagen.

“She’s a full-blown lady, a mother of two kids, who I chose from 50 applicants, who had to pose in their swimsuits in the Mermaid pose. Then I saw six of them, all posing naked, and I chose someone who’s a physiotherapist and aerobics teacher, so she’s fit but not thin. It’s a proper life-size piece, a proper woman; she’s the opposite of the conventional idealised figure.”

The Folkstone Triennial will run from June 25 to September 25.

Artist fact file

Name: Cornelia Parker.

Born: Cheshire, 1956. Now: Lives and works in London.

Best known for: Large-scale works, including everyday objects, which she subjects to extreme force and then transforms remnants into something new.

The process: Often violent, so she refers to changes in objects as “cartoon death” in a nod to Tom and Jerry or the Road Runner recovering miraculously after flattening or explosive scenes.

Turner Prize: Nominated in 1997 as part of all-female shortlist for her work Mass (Colder, Darker Matter).

When in York: Cornelia will give a talk on June 30 from 1pm to 2pm at King’s Manor, Exhibition Square.