Our Artist to Watch for June is Glasgow-based artist and musician Luke Fowler. Fowler was the recipient of the Contemporary Art Society’s £60,000 Award Annual in 2010 and was recently nominated for the Turner Prize. Luke is currently completing his new work The Poor Stockinger, The Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott which will enter the collections of the Hepworth Wakefield and Wolverhampton Art Gallery, in association with Film and Video Umbrella, funded by our Award. This major new work will open at the Hepworth Wakefield on 23 June.
A central figure in Glasgow’s vibrant art scene, Fowler’s experimental films focus on meticulously researched subjects, including vanguard thinkers and counter-cultural figures, such as maverick psychologist R.D. Laing, post-punk musician Xentos ‘Fray’ Bentos, the conservationist Bogman Palmjaguar and the English composer Cornelius Cardew, a founding member of the Scratch Orchestra. Characterised by disrupted and abstracted visual narratives drawing on the conventions of documentary film-making and where the relationship between sound and image is a central concern, Fowler’s densely layers films have attracted international critical acclaim.
Luke Fowler (born 1978, Scotland) lives and works in Glasgow. Recent solo exhibitions include Inverleith House (2011); Serpentine Gallery (2009) and Kunsthalle Zurich (2008). Fowler was one of the participating artists in the British Art Show 7 (2010 – 2011). In 2012 the artist will have a solo exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield. The artist has been nominated for The Turner Prize 2012, for his exhibition at Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2011) and has been the recipient of several awards including the Paul Hamlyn Award 2010, the Jarman Award in 2008 and the Dewar Prize in 2004.
Image: Luke Fowler, The Poor Stockinger, The Luddite Cropper and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott, 2012. Commissioned by The Hepworth Wakefield, Wolverhampton Art Gallery and Film and Video Umbrella., through the Contemporary Art Society Annual Award: Commission to Collect. Image: WEA Archive, YUC Library, London Metropolitan University. Photo: A.S. Parkin.
