Jayne Parker [UK] [DVD] (2008)

Jayne Parker (b. 1957) studied at Mansfield College of Art, Canterbury College of Art and the Slade. She was a visiting lecturer at Goldsmiths' college from 1984 until 1998 and has taught at the Slade School of Fine Art since 1989. Her work has been shown widely at art venues, on television and in film festivals internationally.

Jayne Parker discovered film as a medium when she was a sculpture student at canterbury College of Art (1977-80). Objects, performance and gesture were combined by the camera to explore space, duration and the physical body. Soon the films became independent works.

Free Show (1979) is a film in three acts in which domestic events have overtones of threat as well as the circus (cutting liver, ironing a fly, plucking eyebrows). RX Recipe (1980), a lage eel in a bath is stuffed with vegetables and bandaged by a woman who then similarly binds her won leg, to whispered instructions on the soundtrack. Cat (1980) was the first of a series of roughcast but sharply drawn animations featuring a woman, a cat and a fish.