STW "I want you, the viewer, to be following a natural progression, a natural course of events. By having the camera as a witness—I’m not tampering. Most of my work isn’t edited. I always think that by editing I’m giving it a lot of narrative, making decisions about how things should then be, or how things should then transpire. Whereas if the camera’s just sitting there, running, it becomes a more natural process."
Sam Taylor-Wood described herself trying to avoid being an artist for as long as possible.
Constance of ideas meant that if she didn't do it she felt like she would go mad.
b.1967 London UK
Graduating from Goldsmiths 1997, now labelled as part of the infamous YBA clan, she works primarily in visual art: film and photography after initially starting out studying sculpture. She describes finding her voice in images and film and her work has a spiritual element although the subject matter is often more full of people with a juxtaposition of silence/music and visible emotion.
She uses multiple screens to engage the viewer, who is likely to want to see a piece more than once to get a fuller feeling what is happening in the work.
She describes work such as 'Wuthering heights' a series of atmosphere landscape stills as trying to find the soul of something.
Having survived 2 types of cancer, divorce and then finding a analysed happiness with someone a lot younger her themes of love loss and interest in things frozen in time has an authentic gravitas to it.
The video series still life confronts the viewer with a staged, old masters style still life which disintegrates unnaturally fast before our eyes. There's a lightness and beauty to the lighting and films despite it's deeper and more haunting metaphors.
Thoughts:
Love the lighting, human transient quality of her work, that is emotive. The videos are things of there time when fashion, props are identifiable. Perhaps why I prefer the subtle 'still life' works that ape old masters in their lighting and composition.
THe lightness and humour to the Bram Stoker series I like. An artist not afraid to put herself in front of the camera and engage with her images in a personal way.
Still Life
2001
Duration: 3 minutes 44 seconds
35mm film/DVD
2001
Duration: 3 minutes 44 seconds
35mm film/DVD
Gallery representation:
White Cube London
references:
http://whitecube.com/artists/sam_taylor-johnson/
http://bombmagazine.org/article/2170/sam-taylor-wood
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