Luke Fowler


Luke Fowler is an artist, 16mm filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. Fowler was a fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute in 2015–2016

Work

Fowler studied printmaking at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in Dundee. His work explores the limits and conventions of biographical and documentary film-making with an emphasis on sound, marginalised communities and radical voices. Fowler is represented by The Modern Institute, Galerie Gisela Capitain, and Taka Ishii Gallery.

Film work

He creates cinematic collages that have often been linked to the British Free Cinema movement of the 1950s, as well as traditions within American and British experimental cinema. He has collaborated or been in dialogue with the filmmakers: Lis Rhodes, Cerith Wyn Evans, Peter Todd, William Raban, Robert Beavers, and Peter Hutton. His para-documentary films have explored counter cultural figures including Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing, English composer Cornelius Cardew, Marxist-Historian E. P. Thompson and Scottish film-poet Margaret Tait. In 2018, Fowler created Mum’s Cards, a short 16 mm film exploring the archival index cards accumulated by his mother, sociologist Bridget Fowler, reflecting on memory, intellectual life, and the material traces of knowledge. In 2022, Fowler directed Being in a Place – A Portrait of Margaret Tait, an experimental documentary drawing on archival footage, recordings, notebooks, and correspondence to explore the life, work, and poetic approach to cinema of Scottish filmmaker and poet Margaret Tait, with attention to her relationship to the Orkney landscape. The film premiered in the Forum section of the 73rd Berlin International Film Festival.

Films on Sound and installations

Fowler’s work frequently engages with sound, the politics of music, and the communities in which music is produced and circulated. This interest is evident in his portraits of musicians and composers including Brunhild Ferrari, Patrick Cowley, Christian Wolff, and Martin Bartlett, as well as in films and installations that address place and acoustic phenomena.

Musical projects

Fowler formed the duo Lied Music with John W. Fail, performing live music concrete The duo collaborated and performed live with Mark Vernon and Barry Burns, releasing two LPs. Since 2010, he has collaborated regularly with Richard Youngs, resulting in the box set Research Musics En-Of 50 and the avant-disco group AMOR, which released two 12″ records, an LP, and an EP on Nightschool Records.

Collaborations

Fowler has worked with a number of collaborators, including Sue Tompkins, David Grubbs, Ryoko Akama, David Toop, Lionel Marchetti, Corin Sworn, Margaret Salmon, Marcus Schmickler, Eric La Casa, George Clark and Peter Hutton, Mark Fell, Lee Patterson, Toshiya Tsunoda, and Richard Youngs. He collaborated with guitarist Keith Rowe and film maker and curator Peter Todd on the live sound and film work The Room.

Selected exhibitions

Solo

Group

Awards