Stuart Marshall

Born in Manchester in 1949, Stuart Marshall studied Fine Art at Hornsey and Newport colleges of Art and did an MA teaching fellowship in New Music Composition and Ethnomusicology with Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan University, USA.

Marshall was a founder member of London Video Arts in 1976, and was a committed advocate of British video art, as a practitioner, curator and theorist. He curated the first UK/Canadian Video Exchange in 1984 and his videos and writings were amongst the first to explore the relationship between video, television and the media. With later works such as Bright Eyes, he explored, and challenged, misrepresentations of homosexuality during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, at a time when lesbian and gay lifestyles and sexuality were under attack as a result of Clause 28 and the media-encouraged prejudice surrounding the spread of AIDS. Towards the end of his life, working with Maya Vision, Marshall made a number of Channel 4 commissioned documentaries concerning gay identity and he continued to be a passionate campaigner for gay rights.

Marshall was a dedicated teacher in a number of art schools throughout his career, including Chelsea School of Art, the Royal College of Art and Newcastle Polytechnic, where he made Pedagogue with Neil Bartlett and his students, a humorous riposte to Clause 28.

Stuart Marshall was an exceptionally gifted artist and teacher. His creativity was expressed through many forms: avant-garde music, video, performance and installation art as well as film. He was also a gay man with unstinting political commitment to supporting lesbian and gay lives through his work.
Rebecca Dobbs, A Directory of Film & Video Artists, ACE 1992.