CONTACT
parkergthornton@gmail.com
IG @parker.thornton.studio

BIO
Parker Thornton is an artist and writer who lives and works in Atlanta, GA. She earned her BA in English Literature and Studio Art from Oglethorpe University in 2013 and her MFA in Photography from Georgia State University in 2020. Her practice ranges from lens-based media to sculpture, writing, and performance. She has exhibited work nationally at Whitespace, Historic Oakland Cemetery, and SOUP Experimental and internationally at National Centre for Contemporary Arts (Minsk, Belarus) and Usak Archeology Museum (Usak, Turkey) . Parker was the 2020 winner of the Andrew M. West Scholarship at Georgia State University. In 2019, she was an artist in residence at Burren College of Art in Ballyvaughan, Ireland. That year she was also granted a scholarship to attend Anderson Ranch Art Center, and won Best in Show at Day and Night Projects.

​ARTIST STATEMENT

What does the body do, and what do we do to it? Through photography, video, sculpture, and performance I try to understand the ways the body is politicized, aestheticized, and commodified. Psychosexual dynamics and intimate relationships are the basis of these investigations. Unconventional methods and materials in the work serve to abstract, distort, and obscure the human form or the way it’s typically presented. 
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Recent bodies of work offer a contemporary vision of the transformation, exploitation, and possessive desire conveyed in the tales from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. For that work I used experimental materials and methods, such as creating sculptures cast in suet designed to be eaten by birds and subtitling livestream animal sanctuary surveillance footage with autobiographical anecdotes of intimate relationships I’ve had with animals.