Jackie Hatfield

Jackie Hatfield, artist, writer, and academic- born: 5 July 1962 died: November 2 2007.

Her early career was spent making papier-mâché sculptures which enjoyed some recognition and sales before she undertook a variety of casual and sometimes unusual roles. One night, attending a London Film-Makers' Co-op screening, she decided that her future lay in the moving image. After taking advice from Dave Parsons at Central St Martins she elected to study Time Based Media at Maidstone College of Art (from 1991-94), despite not being able to show much evidence of any accomplishment in either film or video. Her ambition, aspiration and intellect however, was more than enough to convince tutors Al Rees and Steve Littman that here was someone very special. David Hall, doyen of British video art, had established the programme in the early 1970s and his legacy and ideas on video and film as artforms were still very influential. These ideas she was later to combine with those of her PhD supervisor Malcolm Le Grice, in a ‘unified’ theoretical framework evidenced in her articles for Millennium Film Journal and Filmwaves over the past few years.

From 1994 to 1995 she studied on the postgraduate programme in Electronic Imaging at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art where Professor Stephen Partridge was one of her tutors. After her Scottish sojourn she returned south and joined the University of Westminster in 1996, initially to take a Doctorate, but rose to Senior lecturer and Course Leader for Contemporary Media Practice, at the School of Media, Art and Design.

In 2003 Professor Partridge invited her to discuss, and then seriously plan a research project that would investigate the ideas, aspirations, achievements of early British videoart, and select, conserve and preserve the best examples. This became REWIND| Artists’ Video in the 70s & 80s, which she joined as its Research Fellow in early 2004. Before leaving Westminster she curated Experiments in Moving Image a survey of UK film and video works including installations and expanded cinema, staged rather appropriately at the Old Lumiere Cinema in central London, and again ‘unifying’ the apparent diverse practice(s) of British film and video artists/makers. The exhibition also led to her anthology of artists’ and filmmakers’ writings: Experimental Film and Video Anthology, (John Libbey London, April 2006, ISBN 0 86196 664 3). This remarkable collection included the voices of 35 practitioners, many of whom had rarely if ever committed to scholarly writing before but succumbed to Jackie’s persuasion and cajoling as the editor and contributor.

Jackie made many trips to New York, which became her second ‘intellectual’ home and favourite city, not least because of her engagement and lively debates with its artists and practitioners. She had ambitious plans for further research on both sides of the Atlantic. This year she won her own large research grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council of Great Britain, investigating ‘Narratives in Expanded Cinema’ which will continue under her spiritual guidance.

External links

* http://www.rewind.ac.uk