Cornelia Parker review – a current affairs lesson devoid of empathy

Frith Street Gallery, London
The British conceptualist is clearly enraged by the chaos in the world today – but her new work can only muster sneering contempt

How can art adequately face up to an age in which Donald Trump is president of the United States, the civil war in Syria is more than six years old, and the far right threatens to become part of Europe’s political mainstream? It is tempting to conclude from Cornelia Parker’s inane attempt to engage with some of these realities that it can’t. Perhaps our time is simply too strange and surreal for artists to get their heads around. Imagination shrivels and dies faced with the enormity of the news headlines.

It is no doubt the unreal, monstrous, mad character of those headlines that Parker was trying to capture when she got a bunch of young kids to copy them out on blackboards. Children aged five, seven, eight cor and 10 have created a series of chalked up newsboards in varying degrees of legibility, translating the violence, absurdity and ugliness of adult reality into their innocent scribbles. There’s even some youthful optimism. “LABOUR COULD WIN A SNAP ELECTION”, declares News at Eight (Make the Moon Great Again) (2017). Or was it Jeremy Corbyn’s actual spokesman who miscalculated the space needed for the word “election” and had to trail off in tiny letters?

Related: Cornelia Parker: ‘I don’t want to tick anyone else’s boxes’

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