Stephen Sutcliffe is an award-winning British filmmaker and video artist who was born in Harrogate and raised in Wakefield.
This major solo exhibition in The Calder – our contemporary art space opposite the main gallery – included a newly commissioned video installation based on the play, The Contractor (1969) by the Wakefield-born playwright and novelist, David Storey. Storey’s work has long been an inspiration for Sutcliffe and the exhibition complemented A Tender Tumult: The Art of David Storey.
For this exhibition Sutcliffe responded to themes suggested by the simple plot of The Contractor which examines class and cultural differences through the turbulent relationship of an employee and the employer’s son as they erect and dismantle a marquee for a wedding party.
Sutcliffe frequently alludes to literary and theatrical structures in his work, which marries archive broadcast material with newspaper clippings and photographs. The resulting video collages created disjunctures, contradictions and double takes.
This exhibition was kindly supported by
The Elephant Trust
