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David Curtis

Profile

AHRC Senior Research Fellow, Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design: British Artists' Film and Video Study Collection

David Curtis has written extensively about artists' film since the 1960s; brought the influential P.Adams Sitney New American Cinema tour to the UK in 1968 (screening at the NFT and at 12 universities) and was involved in setting up the London Filmmakers Co-operative in 1966. His book, Experimental Cinema: a Fifty-year Evolution was published in 1971. His most recent book, A History of Artists' Film and Video in Britain was published in 2006 and is associated with the extensive screenings of artists' films at Tate Britain (2003-04)

Statement

A consistent objective of my research projects has been the uncovering, recording and documenting of the histories of artists' film and video in Britain and abroad. The artists' film has remained until very recently an art form known to only a tiny engaged minority, with few opportunities for the general public to encounter it and learn more about it. Even now, with the ubiquity of the moving image in museums and galleries, it is rare to see work that is more than two years old, or by artists not represented by commercial dealers. So the history of the medium and the breadth of its achievement remain woefully under-recognised. Most of my working life has been spent outside of academia but has included working as a film-programmer, writer, arts funder, exhibition curator and occasional designer of television programmes; all forms of audience-development and often involving an element of original historical research. In the context of Central Saint Martins, my projects have included the design and assembling of the British Artists' Film and Video Study Collection at Central Saint Martins, curating the collection of 170 film and video works that formed the exhibition A Century of Artists' Film in Britain at Tate Britain with its website, and researching and writing my book A History of Artists' Film and Video in Britain.

Biography

2006 A History of Artists' Film and Video in Britain, BFI Publishing
2004 'In Her Own Words', Margaret Tait, LUX Publishing
2003-04 A Century of Artists' Film in Britain, curator, Tate Britain, London
2002 On General Release, co-curator (with Lynda Morris), Norwich Gallery and tour. Artists' Film in Britain: Six Moments in From Blast to Freeze, (editor Henry Meyrick-Hughes) Museum Wolfsburg, Germany/Les Abattoires, Toulouse
2001 'Light Plays Primal Scenes' in PIX 3, BFI publishing

Links

www.studycollection.org.uk
www.tate.org.uk/britain/artistsfilm