Co-op Dialogues 1966-2016: Jayne Parker and Luke Fowler

2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the London Film-makers’ Co-operative (LFMC), a ground-breaking organisation that pioneered a tradition for the production, distribution, and exhibition of artists’ moving image in the United Kingdom. To mark this anniversary Tate Britain and LUX present a monthly series of screenings and artists’ conversations revisiting the legacy of the London Film-makers’ Co-op and its significance today.
A selection of works by Parker and Fowler will be screened, followed by a conversation between the artists.
Jayne Parker (b. 1957) discovered film as a medium whilst studying sculpture at Canterbury College of Art in the late 1970s. Her films focus the gaze of the camera on the performing body and the way its gestures, as well as on objects such as music instruments, become a means to contemplate the production of selfhood and art. Most of her work from the past two decades has consistently investigated the relationship between music and film, attempting “to reflect the rigour of the music” through cinematographic language.
Luke Fowler (b. 1978) is a Glasgow-based artist, filmmaker and musician whose 16mm films tell the stories of alternative movements in Britain, from psychiatry to photography to music to education. Whilst some of his early films dealt with music and musicians as subjects, in his later work, most notably A Grammar for Listening (2009), sound itself becomes a key concern – as a process, but also as a possibility for filmmaking to become a truly collaborative practice.