Stuart Croft Foundation is delighted to announce the first recipients of three distinct funding awards are Frances Scott (Moving Image Award, £5000), Erik Martinson (Special Projects Award, £2500) and Sam Williams (Education Award, £2500). The awards have been set up to enable filmmakers, researchers and exhibitors working between and beyond the gallery and cinema to create small-scale projects, where other funding options may be difficult to obtain. The selected projects reflect the aim of the Stuart Croft Foundation to support the production and dissemination of new moving image works.
The Moving Image Award supports moving image artists and filmmakers to test new ideas and take risks with both form and content. Frances Scott’s Its soil was a plot responds to the landscape around West Yorkshire listed as ‘waste’ in the Domesday survey of 1086. The work brings this idea of waste and its sculptural potential into conversation with the surpluses of writing and film: asides, footnotes, and the rejected material produced through the editing process.
The Education Award provides grants to support post-graduate students (MA and Doctoral research candidates) and those within their first year of graduating to conduct specific aspects of their film practice. Sam Williams, a recent graduate of the RCA, will make a new film, the actual structure is the material, inspired by the late British choreographer Rosemary Butcher (MBE) and her radical choreographic practice.
The Special Projects Award enables curators, writers and researchers to realise distinctive projects, making original contributions to public access and discourse concerning the moving image in its many forms. Erik Martinson will curate Its origins are indeterminate, an exciting UK touring programme of over forty international artists’ films, examining the concept of language as a virus.
I am delighted to be supported by the Stuart Croft Foundation Moving Image Award, which will enable collaborations with other practitioners that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, and greatly extends the scope and ambition of the work across film, sculpture, sound and text. Although I met Stuart only once, I understand some measure of his spirit through those stories told by his friends and colleagues, and from knowledge of his work, which makes this all the more meaningful and generous opportunity. I am indebted to the Foundation for the chance to realise this film.
– Moving Image Award recipient Frances Scott
The awards were selected from over three hundred applications by Stuart Croft Foundation trustees: artists Steven Eastwood, Keira Greene and Anna Lucas, and by Whitstable Biennial Director Sue Jones.

MOVING IMAGE AWARD £5000
FRANCES SCOTT – Its soil was a plot
Its soil was a plot is an expanded film composed of interconnected elements: a 16mm film, sculpture, sound installation and manuscript. The work responds to the landscape around West Yorkshire listed as ‘waste’ in the Domesday survey of 1086. This idea of waste and its sculptural potential enters into conversation with the surpluses of writing and film; asides, footnotes, and the rejected matter produced through the editing process. The work has been commissioned by Art Licks and will be shown across three sites at Yorkshire Sculpture Park: the archive, Bothy Gallery and 18th century Camellia House, as part of a group exhibition in October 2017.
Frances Scott works with moving image and text, presented through screenings, installations, events and publications. Recent works have considered the material that exists around the periphery of the cinematic production and its apparatus, proposing an idea of film as composed of its metonymic fragments. Her first solo exhibition CANWEYE { } was at Focal Point Gallery, Southend, 2016, later presented as a single screen film at the Whitechapel Gallery, 2017. Other selected exhibitions, commissions and screenings include:
Peninsula Arts and South West Film & Television Archive, Plymouth (2017); Alchemy Film Festival, Scotland (2016); ‘The London Open’, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2015); MK
Gallery, Milton Keynes (2015); and ‘Selected III’ videoclub and FLAMIN screening programme at Nottingham Contemporary, CCA Glasgow, FACT Liverpool and Whitechapel Gallery, London (2013); and in the USA at Seattle International Film Festival, North West Film Center Portland, Balagan Films Boston, Anthology Film Archives New York, and LA Film Forum Los Angeles (2014).

SPECIAL PROJECTS AWARD £2500
ERIK MARTINSON – Its origins are indeterminate
Its origins are indeterminate is a screening series of artists’ moving image that examines the concept of language-as-a-virus. As carriers of meaning, words and images are vulnerable to intervention and corruption by artists seeking varied ends. Disrupting the control of language leads to new forms of resistance. Four programmes curated by Erik Martinson will feature over forty international artists and will be presented at three UK host venues.
The title for the screening series comes from a work by Robert Barry. Additional references include: Ring by Koji Suzuki, Pontypool by Tony Burgess and VHS tapes of Hellraiser spotted on top of bus stops in south London. This series considers: (mis)translations, circulation, repetition and versioning, un-containment, the surround, manifestos as spellcraft, and much more.
Erik Martinson (Canada/Latvia) is an independent curator and writer based in London, UK. He worked in Toronto at Vtape, a not-for-profit video art distributor from 2005-2014, and was a member of the Pleasure Dome curatorial collective from 2006-2014. He has curated screenings/exhibitions for The Images Festival (2012); A Space Gallery (2012); Art Gallery of Mississauga (2013); Institute of Contemporary Arts London (2015); Chalton Gallery (2016); DIY Space for London (2016); LUX (2016/2017); Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius (2016); and The Ryder, London (2017). He participated in the Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive on Time-Based Media, New York (2013) and was on the selection jury for Videonale.15 at Kunstmuseum Bonn (2015). He was assistant editor for the Nuclear Culture Source Book (edited by Ele Carpenter) published by Black Dog Publishing in partnership with Bildmuseet and Arts Catalyst (2016). Recently he completed his MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths, University of London (2016) and was in residence at Rupert, Vilnius (2016).

EDUCATION AWARD £2500
SAM WILLIAMS – the actual structure is the material
Inspired by the late British choreographer Rosemary Butcher MBE and her radical choreographic practice, the actual structure is the material will be a reflection on her legacy and our friendship in relation to my own practice, explored through her conceptual relationship to body and site. A seminal figure in the formation of my approach to art-making, the film is an imagined dialogue between us in which we will explore how key sites in our personal histories resonate now, in absence of the moving body.
Sam Williams (b. 1985, UK) currently lives and works in London, where he studied MA Sculpture and Moving Image at the Royal College of Art. Sam has exhibited and screened work at institutions such as Temporary Arts Project (Southend), Outpost (Norwich), Baltic39 (Newcastle), Jerwood Space, Tate Britain and the V&A Museum (London). As part of the audio-visual group Emptyset he has performed internationally and has shown collaborative works with choreographer Rosemary Butcher MBE at The Place (London), Nottingham Contemporary and Akademie der Künste (Berlin). He was awarded the RCA residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (2015) and the Relax Digital Commission (2016).
Download the SCF AWARDS 2017 PRESS RELEASE – 30 AUGUST 2017 (619KB)