"In my work I try to see and understand what the body can do… Inanimate
objects can also be the body."
"I like the physicality of film and its precision; I like the sense of
space within the frame… Filmmaking allows me to make connections between
seemingly unconnected images or events. There is a strong element of performance
in all my work."
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). In RX Recipe (1980), a large eel in a bath is stuffed with
vegetables and bandaged by a woman who then similarly binds her own leg,
to whispered instructions on the soundtrack. I Cat (1980) was the first
of a series of roughcast but sharply drawn animations featuring a woman,
a cat and a fish.
