Accession Code: wu1073 Title:Different Dirt (Found in America: Lost in Britain: Found in Britain: Lost in America) Date completed: 2008 Classification: Prints Medium: Archival Inkjet Print Height (mm): 360 Width (mm): 440 Depth (mm): Inscription: Location Name: Faculty of Arts Building Location Description: Location Floor: 3

Courtesy Cornelia Parker and Cristea Roberts Gallery, London.

One of a series of 6 prints entitled Different Dirt (Found in America: Lost in Britain: Found in Britain: Lost in America).

This series of six prints features images of objects exhumed from the ground. The artefacts were dug up by hobbyists and amateur archaeologists with the aid of metal detectors from various locations in the US and the UK. They were then sold as lots on eBay and bought by the artist.

She has scanned them in such a way that they seem to be hovering in mid-air; it recalls her other work like the walls of suspended stone and the suspended blown up shed. Opposite each image is the description that the detectorist wrote to sell the items on ebay. Some of the descriptions are matter-of-fact - others are idiomatic and personal. The title of the ebay description for this print is Military Buttons (Detector Finds). Each item was then reburied in specific sites on the opposite side of the Atlantic, in a kind of reverse archaeology.

Much of Parker's work uses these sorts of ready-mades, created or discovered by others, appropriated by her and repurposed in a formal, almost ritualistic way. Here, the process of loss, recovery and loss is evidenced through documentation. The objects themselves may not be found again or they may be found and lost again but these works assert that they exist somewhere in the earth.