Rita Parniczky
Rita Parniczky is a multidisciplinary artist. She works with sculpture, photography, video, installation and drawing. Her interest in exposing invisible structures leads her to observe mundane objects and traditional techniques with an intention of revealing unexpected qualities, meanings, and to play with the viewer’s perception.
Parniczky is a graduate of Central Saint Martins (2009), where she studied textiles inventing and developing her own weave technique to construct her sculpture, ‘X-Ray’ series. Her first prestigious commission (2010) of this work was awarded by The Worshipful Company of Weavers shortly after her graduation. Parniczky continues to evolve ‘X-Ray’ series, while she has worked with other mediums to express her concepts and visions since 2016.
Parniczky has exhibited internationally, and had solo exhibitions in London and England. ’X-Ray’ series is selected for the ‘VIII International Triennial of Textile Arts 2024’ in Hungary. Parniczky won awards including the Perrier-Jouët Arts Salon Prize, received Arts Council grants and her work is in the V&A permanent collection. Other awards include the Theo Moorman Trust Award and Peter Collingwood Trust Award; for photography and video she has received the a-n Bursary and London Creative Network bursary.
Parniczky was invited to join The Worshipful Company of Weavers as a Freeman in 2021; she was admitted to the Company as Livery in 2022; she was awarded the Freedom of The City of London in 2021.
‘X-Ray’ series, a hybrid between sculpture and drawing, explores structure and materiality through the process of hand-weaving and installation; the former introduces a weave technique uniquely developed by Parniczky, while the latter presents a visual transformation prompted by light.
Parniczky’s curiosity about discovering less visible structures led her to develop her own weave technique. This method allows her to reveal the entire vertical warp, the structure which she sees as the skeleton of the woven body. Challenging the boundaries of traditional weaving with unconventional materials, and testing how far she can push weave against its own conventions, Parniczky makes work that is translucent, with threads drawing intriguing formations. These qualities are emphasised in installation.
Parniczky exposes ‘X-Ray’ series to light to investigate materiality and the movement of time. For example, the way a weaving is visually transformed and mistaken for glass; or the passing of time experienced during a performance with sunlight. As the sun progresses across space it gradually alters the appearance of the sculpture’s medium in its way. This is a visual transformation though it plays with the senses, seemingly translating into a physical reality. This performance is location and time specific; it repeats every sunny day at specific times for a set length of time only