Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood graduated from Goldsmiths College in 1990. Her work in photography and film centre on the creation of enigmatic situations replete with a latent but explosive energy, situations that could go any way and in which any number of things could happen.

In 'Prelude', 2006, Sam Taylor-Wood filmed a musician playing a piece of music by Bach. The musician appears at one with the cello during the virtuoso performance, but the instrument has been digitally erased leaving the raw emotion evoked by this absence.

The film 'The Last Century', 2005, is distinguished by an ironic and subversive use of media. This 7 minute 12 second long film made inside a smoky pub appears to stretch time and extend a single moment. The five figures are still for the duration of the film but the smoke of the cigarette continues to climb the air and the smile begins to crack.

'Crying Men', 2002-2004, consists of photographs, in colour and black and white, of male film actors crying. These multi-layered and provocative images present the viewer with seemingly private, intimate moments of sorrowful emotion. However, with the knowledge that they are actors it is left unconfirmed whether what the viewer is experiencing is an insight into their souls or the beautiful execution and capture of another acting role.

Taylor-Wood's film 'David', 2004 allows us to witness David Beckham, the England football Captain, asleep. It provides the viewer with an intimate, serene vision of an otherwise heavily exposed celebrity. The work was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery and is in their permanent collection.

In films like 'Ascension', 2003, and photographs such as 'Wrecked', 1996 and the 'Soliloquy' series, 1998-2000, Taylor-Wood explores the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, fusing religious imagery informed by Renaissance and Baroque painting with the secular, urban and contemporary landscape that she inhabits.

Her works compulsively examine and dissect the contemporary psyche and the place of the individual within the social group. Films like 'Strings', 2004 and her photographic series 'Self Portrait Suspended', 2004 or 'Bram Stoker's Chair', 2005, display the vulnerability and fragility of the human body and self.

Since her first solo exhibition at White Cube in 1995, Taylor-Wood has had numerous solo shows including Fundacio La Caixa, Barcelona; Kunsthalle, Zurich; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Matthew Marks Gallery, New York; Shiseido Gallery, Tokyo; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal, Russian State Museum, St. Petersburg and MCA Moscow. In 1997 Taylor-Wood received the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the Venice Biennale and in the following year she was nominated for the Turner Prize then in 2002 was the youngest artist to have a solo show at the Hayward Gallery, London. Currently, Taylor-Wood has solo exhibitions at the BALTIC in Newcastle and one that tours from the MCA Sydney to the City Gallery Wellington, New Zealand.