Stuart Croft
b. (1970-2015)
Stuart Croft was a London-based artist / filmmaker. He studied Fine Art at Newcastle Polytechnic, Dublin NCAD, Wimbledon School of Art and Chelsea College of Art in London, graduating with an MA in 1998. His work has since been shown widely in the UK, Europe and the USA. He created short film works which he would write, produce and direct, often with the help of a film crew. The films are typically dialogue-based and character-driven, apparently following a contemporary TV drama genre.
Croft's dialogue-based, character-driven films are shown in gallery spaces as installations or single-screen projections. Scenes and characters are established rapidly and only partially, and the audience is quickly drawn into the story. Before long, we are faced with an unmistakable déjà vu sensation, as Croft employed a circular narrative technique and the storyline loops on itself. In this way, debates around entrapment, desire and power are played out. His work explores the relationships between art and cinema and asks what the possibilities are for co-opting languages of the cinematic and dominant narrative into the context of the contemporary art space.
Various institutions have held retrospective screenings of Croft's work, including FACT, Liverpool, UK (2007) and the Galleria Civica di Modena, Italy (2008). He was a Tutor and Teaching Fellow at the Royal College of Art in London.
The artist was in the following exhibition:
Infernal Machine
