‘COMMA 39: Stuart Croft’
October - November 2011
Artist-filmmaker Stuart Croft’s commission at Bloomberg Space is an ambitious new dance film. This is the 39th and final commission in Bloomberg’s prestigious COMMA series.
A bold, cinematic and compelling work, Croft’s new film takes inspiration from MGM musicals, Jean Cocteau, classical ballet, music video and film noir to form a dark meditation on pathos, Hollywood and obsession. It is a circular tale of desire, power and betrayal, in which an aristocratic beauty and a hideously wounded beast enact a seemingly obsessive ritual: they endlessly come together, break apart, come together – ad infinitum.
Croft’s fearless use of mainstream film industry production values has been used here to realise a long-standing ambition to produce a substantial dance film. The presence of such material in the context of a gallery space is rare in artistic terms, and asks direct questions about attention, time and physical reality. Furthermore, Croft’s mapping of the endless film-loop onto the dominant Hollywood image creates an unnerving sense of recurrence, continuity and dislocation.
Alongside the new commission, Bloomberg Space presents a survey of Croft’s earlier films. These include early works such as Point X and Dead Happy, along with more recent, larger-scale films such as Century City and Drive In. Each of these films is selected to reflect on the notion of duality – and the duet – a theme at the heart of the new commission.
About COMMA: Launched in March 2009, COMMA is a dynamic new series of commissions enabling artists to experiment and expand their practice in relation to Bloomberg SPACE and its communities. Over thirty of today’s most outstanding emerging and established international artists will be invited to create new work, installations and architectural interventions in a fast paced succession of exhibitions. The program is curated by David Risley, Graham Gussin, Stephen Hepworth, Sacha Craddock and Vanessa Desclaux.
Sacha Craddock was the co-founder of Bloomberg Space and its co-curator from 2002-2011.
Link to full COMMA commissions.
