Parker Thornton
May 5th - 26th 2023
Opening Reception: Saturday May 6th 6-8 pm
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
The Atlanta-based multi-media artist describes their work as “queer ecology meets Greek mythology.” The exhibition featured an installation of sculpture, photography, and video work depicting a modern adaptation of the Daphne and Apollo myth.
ARTIST STATEMENT
What does the body do, and what do we do to it? Through photo/video, sculpture, and text I try to understand ways that the body is aestheticized and how cultural touchstones shape narratives of the self. Psychosexual dynamics, intimate relationships, and gallows humor underlie these investigations.
I use unconventional methods and materials to abstract, distort, and obscure the human form. Recent bodies of work fuse queer ecology with Greek mythology to offer a contemporary vision of the desire, transformation, and possession conveyed in tales from Ovid’s ancient epic poem “Metamorphoses”, which have haunted art history and literature for millennia.
BIO
Parker Thornton (b. 1991) is an artist and educator who lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She earned a BA from Oglethorpe University in 2013 and an MFA from Georgia State University in 2020. Her practice includes sculpture, photo/video, and writing that explores narratives of the body and the self as they relate to power, queerness, and transformation. She has exhibited work internationally at National Centre for Contemporary Art, Minsk, Belarus and nationally at Whitespace, Atlanta and Historic Oakland Cemetery, with solo shows in Florida (2021), Georgia (2021), and Louisiana (2023). Parker has been an artist-in-residence at Stoveworks (2023), Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences (2021), and Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Ireland (2019). She teaches at Emory University and the High Museum of Art.
WEB
The Greek Chorus (hand)
Archival inkjet print
16×24”
2023
The Greek Chorus (vape)
Archival inkjet print
8×12”
2023
The Greek Chorus (water)
Archival inkjet print
48×24”
2023
GhostBlind
Readymade hunter’s blind
46 x 36 x 24”
2023
Silk Skin (Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve I)
Latex, silk organza hand-dyed with red cabbage, moss, bark, poplar, LED lights
70 x 22”
2021
Silk Skin (Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve II)
Latex, silk organza, moss, bark, pine
70 x 22”
2021
Silk Skin (Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve III)
Latex, silk organza, moss, bark, pine
70 x 22”
2021
Suck and Blow
Single-channel video
1 minute
2023
Seven Minutes in Heaven
Single-channel video
1 minute 56 seconds
2023
Kissing Marathon
Single-channel video
5 minutes 35 seconds
2023
