Cornelia Parker has been named the official artist of the 2017 general election.
The sculptor and installation artist, who was awarded an OBE in 2010, is the first woman to receive the commission after male artists were selected in 2001, 2005, 2010, and 2015.
Parker is free to observe the election however she sees fit, and will produce a piece for the parliamentary art collection in response. Throughout the campaign, she will be posting on Instagram using the handle @electionartist2017.
"It's quite a responsibility but I'm just not going to think about that," Parker, who has been nominated for the Turner Prize, told Sky News. "I'm just going to work in the way I normally work, which is to marinade myself in the material, and then in the middle of the night I'll have a brainwave, I hope."
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Parker's best-known work includes 1995's The Maybe, a performance piece at London's Serpentine Gallery in which Tilda Swinton lay inside a glass case for eight hours a day, every day for a week. For another installation, 1991's Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View, Parker had a garden shed blown up by the British Army, then suspended the fragments - almost as if she were "pressing pause" on the explosion process.
More recently, she produced 2015's Magna Carta (An Embroidery), an embroidered recreation of the Wikipedia article for the Magna Carta. Julian Assange, Doreen Lawrence, and Caitlin Moran were among those who sewed portions of the artwork, which was conceived as a digital-era response to the historic document.
Parker will receive a £17,000 commission fee plus travel expenses for her work observing the 2017 general election, which takes place on the 8th of June.
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