Stuart Croft’s Archive
About Stuart Croft
Stuart Croft (1970 – 2015) was a London-based artist / filmmaker. He graduated from Wimbledon School of Art in 1994 and went on to gain an MA from Chelsea College of Art and Design in 1998.
His dialogue-based, character-driven films often focus on themes of power, recurrence, entrapment and desire. Croft explored the relationships between art and cinema and his works have been presented as installations or single-screen projections within galleries, contemporary art museums and cinemas. The films have been shown in over 25 countries to date.
Croft also taught fine art and film and became a highly-respected educator. In 2009 he founded the Royal College of Art’s Moving Image Studio and in 2013 he established the RCA’s new Moving Image Pathway. He was a recipient of various production awards, research grants and commissions including awards from Arts Council England, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Royal College of Art and Bloomberg.
Visit Stuart Croft’s website to view clips, along with a full biography, filmography, and publication history.
About the archive
Stuart Croft’s archive comprises a variety of documentation and ephemera including notebooks, scripts, drawings and correspondence, as well as finished film works and moving image material on a variety of tape and disc formats.
Included within the physical archive is an extensive collection of material that had been boxed by Stuart himself. The artist had carefully maintained this living archive within his studio and the contents reflect the coalescence of his working life through his thoughts and his unique creative process as an artist. The depth of information contained within the archive provides a rich, valuable resource for artists, researchers, curators and scholars.
The Stuart Croft Foundation inherited the archive and one of our core aims is to ensure the preservation of Stuart’s legacy. In October 2017, it was announced that Stuart’s films and working documents have placed within the BFI National Archive. In January 2018, the Foundation provided funds to employ a dedicated archivist, Fabian Macpherson, who joined the BFI Special Collections Team to formally appraise, catalogue and carry out basic preservation for both paper and digital documents within the archive. Fabian completed this work in September 2018 and the Stuart Croft archive catalogue is now available online via BFI Collections Search. Read more about how the foundation has been developing the archive on our news section.
The Stuart Croft archive held at BFI National Archive. Images: Fabian Mcpherson
BFI National Archive
Founded in 1935, the BFI National Archive develops, cares for, and interprets one of the largest and most important collections of film and television in the world, that illustrates the art, history and impact of film. The BFI is an international leader in film preservation and the guardian of Britain’s unparalleled film and television screen heritage. The BFI’s artist moving image collection includes close to one and a half thousand titles, and it traces the development and changing nature of the experimental practice, going from avant-garde early cinema and underground film to conceptual video art and contemporary artist film.
The BFI’s aims compliment those of the Foundation, namely, to: encourage the development of the moving image; promote education about the moving image; promote access to and appreciation of the widest possible range of British and world cinema; and, establish, care for and develop collections reflecting the moving image history and heritage of the United Kingdom. State of the art facilities will ensure the preservation and conservation of both Stuart Croft’s moving image and paper materials at the BFI.
Access
The Stuart Croft Foundation is committed to promoting public access and scholarly research into Stuart’s archive.
Access the Stuart Croft archive catalogue on the BFI Collections Search.
Copyright of the archive remains with the Foundation.
For all image and licensing enquiries, please visit the Stuart Croft Artimage page via artimage.org.uk/artists/c/stuart-croft.
