Introducing the 2026 Artist in Residence: Luke Fowler

Luke Fowler (b. 1978) joins St John's College as our Artist in Residence for Trinity Term 2026. To welcome Luke to the College, and to learn more about his practice, we are hosting a short talk and drinks reception in the Kendrew Barn Gallery. This talk will start at 5.00 PM.

About Luke:

Luke is an artist, filmmaker and musician based in Glasgow. He has previously been a Jarman Award winner and has been nominated for the Turner Prize.

Combining aspects of structural cinema with documentary techniques, Fowler’s films shatter the limits and conventions of standard nonfiction filmmaking. Working with archival footage, 16mm film shot by himself and sound recordings made in collaboration with renowned sound artists, he complexly constructs and weaves these elements into film portraits of various “outsiders” such as radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing, experimental composers Cornelius Cardew and Martin Bartlett, Marxist historian E.P. Thompson or filmmaker Margaret Tait, . Fowler’s own films and influences draw equally from experimental music, the Lettrist movement of the 1950s and 1970s independent cinema.

Fowler has cultivated a strong body of work that continues to rapidly grow alongside a multifaceted artistic practice that makes him one of the more dynamic and exciting artists working today.

Describing his own practice, Luke says: “The sensibility behind many of these works is that of the auto-didact. The work begins with self- reflection, intuition, research. It then fans out into several encounters; with an archive, a place, individuals or a community. The works often revolve around a specific landscape or cultural milieu that I invite the spectator to inhabit, at least for the duration given. In the various portrait films I have made, I reject conventional narrative trappings- substituting them instead for a dialectical montage that recognises the contradictions and complexities of social and psychological life. During the editing, I am striving to find a form which is an equivalent for the content, the nature of the material and my own experiences, during filming. In these works I hope to transmit to the viewer my own convictions about an individual or group whose histories have largely been dismissed, marginalized or mis-recognised by society at large.”