Faculty Member, School of Art and Media
Lecturer in Media Arts
Thesis Title: Every frame counts: gender and creative practice in animation
Professor Liz Wells
Dr Roberta Mock
About
Kayla is an artist film-maker who explores subjectivity and sense of place in her practice using photography, sound, film, performance, found objects, drawing, writing, and digital technologies. She is interested in the intersection between the natural world and urban environments, in particular liminal spaces such as the industrial outskirts of the city; and she also produces collaborative work with Stuart Moore. Her films have received numerous network screenings on the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, with television broadcasts in Australia, Canada, France, Austria, and Germany; and she has shown in group exhibitions at The Barbican London, The Norwich Gallery, The Newlyn Gallery, Tate, and Arnolfini Bristol. Works since 2000 include 'Walking Out' (2000) a woman's retracing of the interior landscape of sexual abuse; 'Inner City' (2001) for The Year of the Artist; and the Super 16mm diptych 'Verge' (2005) for Salt Gallery, Hayle, Cornwall. Recent commissions include the High Definition film 'Small World' (2007) for the 'Definitive Stories' screening programme at the National Review of Live Art, Tramway, Glasgow and 'Teign Spirit' (2009) for Animate Projects and CABE's SeaChange initiative. Kayla is a lecturer in media arts; her doctoral research investigates gender and creative practice in animation.
She studied BA Fine Art on the course led by Roy Ascott at Gwent College of Higher Education from 1982 - 1985, specialising in video art, performance and installation. Whilst at art college she co-founded the feminist video and performance group Dark Bananas, and presented work at The Midland Goup Performance Art Platform, Southhill Park, Southwark Park, the Air Gallery, and ICA New Contemporaries; her video 'A Family Conversation' about mother/daughter (non)communication was broadcast on BBC television in 1984. She graduated in 1985 and joined the South Wales Women's Film Group, learning animation under the guidance of Les Mills and Joanna Quinn at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, where she made her first 16mm film 'Adult Day Return'.
Kayla moved to Devon in 1986, and became a management committee member of Exeter Film and Video Workshop. She learned 16mm film-making with EFVW founder Chris Garrett and continued to develop her practice as an experimental film-maker, presenting work at Plymouth Arts Centre and Watershed Media Centre, Bristol. Whilst with EFVW she organised and curated programmes by film-makers such as Anna Thew and Richard Kwietniowski; designed and published documentation for the Women’s Film and Video Network conference; led training workshops in film and video production; and was artist in residence at several schools.
A commission to create a looped 16mm work-in-progress 'Looks Familar' for projection at an art and music event at Spacex Gallery, Exeter, led to Kayla joining the London Film Makers' Co-op in order to edit her film and have 16mm screening prints made. 'Looks Familiar' was screened as the short before Ken Russell's 'Lair of the White Worm' by Michael Rose, then cinema programmer at Watershed Media Centre; and the film was selected for the Film and Video Umbrella 1990 tour 'Metaphors, Monologues and Landscapes: Programme of Experimental Film'.
She has been based in Plymouth since December 1989. In the 1990s production of her 16mm films was supported by grants from the Arts Council and the BFI, with additional funding from regional and national television commissioning schemes such as the South West Arts/Television South West Film Award for 'Nuclear Family' (1990); and two Animate awards from the Arts Council and Channel Four Television for 'Cage of Flame' (1992) an exploration of menstrual dreams, and 'Sunset Strip' (1996) the visual music created by a year of sunsets. Her work as a film-maker developed in parallel with a career creating distinctive animated title sequences and visuals for television, for programmes including 'Canan nan Gaidheil' (Scottish TV 1992) and 'Floyd on Africa' (BBC2 1996).
In 1994 she founded START, an annual festival to showcase moving image work by artists and film-makers of south west Britain. Kayla continued to organise START festivals and film tours in collaboration with photographer and film-maker Stuart Moore, until the last START event 'Sunday Shorts' in November 2006 which featured the Plymouth Exchange film programmes from Plymouth Massachusetts in the US and from Plymouth UK; securing funding for the initiative from South West Arts, Plymouth City Council, Channel 4, South West Media Development Agency, Ginsters, and others. In 1997 she co-founded the production company Sundog Media Partnership with Stuart Moore. Sundog Media has produced many innovative projects, from films for satellite-driven screenings in bars and clubs across the UK, to a screenplay for an animated opera commissioned by Picture This for disabled artists' group Art & Power, and was responsible for the documentation of Greenlink Environmental Arts, the major programme of urban regeneration in Mount Wise, Devonport (1998 to 2002), for which it created a comprehensive project archive. In recent years Sundog Media has produced films and led research projects for South and West Devon Health Authority, Plymouth and District Racial Equality Council, Fata He, and Plymouth City Council; and won the 2009 Media Innovation Award for Collaboration between Business and Young People for 'There 2 Care', a clay animation made with young carers.
Contact Information
http://www.kaylaparker.co.uk/index.html
Faculty of Arts
M08 Scott Building
University of Plymouth
Drake Circus
Plymouth PL4 8AA
UK
Skype: kayla_kp
