theEYE: Sam Taylor Wood (2005)

• 74%
• 2005

Many of Sam Taylor-Wood's distinctive photographs and films depict an affluent and fashionable social scene. But her concerns are often isolation and anxiety, conflict and alienation. Her art is alluring and disarming, and also frequently formally inventive. She uses multiple screens, still images combined with sound, and complex interior views conjured up with a panoramic camera. Among her earliest photographs are confrontational and sexually charged self-portraits. Recently, after two periods of treatment for cancer, she has returned to exploring, both directly and allusively, images of herself. Religion too has become a focus for many of her artworks, which at times echo and extend the forms of religious art of the past. In this film, which features extracts from many key works including 16mm, Brontosaurus and Still Life, Sam Taylor-Wood reflects on her concerns and ways of working, on autobiography in her art, and on sex and death.