Jayne Parker
Almost Out

‘I feel that my mother is inside me. She is very happy. I want to push her out, gently, because I care for her and don’t want to hurt her. My father is inside me. He is asleep.’ – Jayne Parker

Southwark Park Galleries and LUX invite you to a rare screening of Jayne Parker’s, Almost Out (1985).
This 90-minute film is a fragmented ‘confrontation/dialogue between the filmmaker and her mother, both naked. The gap between intention and expression is explored as the camera isolates parts of the body, and the women speak about how the image relates to themselves and their body image.
Parker says at one point, ‘I want to please my mother, that is what the film is about!’ The mother looks at her naked body on the monitor and talks about how she feels being produced as an image. What ensues is a brutal but caring discussion between mother and daughter that is disturbing, sad and breathtakingly intense. Made when many women artists were examining mother-daughter relationships, Jayne Parker’s celebrated but rarely seen video is one of the bravest pieces of self-analysis. Mother and daughter sit naked, while an unseen cameraman asks questions and the artist questions her mother.
This screening is part of Southwark Park Galleries public events programme to coincide with their current touring exhibition From the Kitchen Table: Drew Gallery Projects 1984-90 that runs until June 30.
Almost Out was originally presented in the seminal Third Generation Women Sculptors Today exhibition organised by Drew Gallery Projects for the 1986 Canterbury Festival Fringe.

‘The Third Generation of Women sculptors have stretched, pushed and extended the boundaries of sculpture so much that only by showing a range of work such as this can you begin to see what sculpture 1986 is about’ – Sandra Drew, 1986