Can you see the wood for the trees?

I was at Sam Taylor-Wood's show at The Baltic in Gateshead around when this film footage was taken...

Sam's work revealed to me traces and elements of mediaeval still-lives captured in oil; Candid portraits of musicians and jongleurs... Desperate Hollywood Men spun in celluoid, shedding tears and feigning tantrums... And there was Sam, ethereal and lovely, floating like a ghostly enigma above chairs and props, a propos of nothing, real and surreal...

My sister, La Wiki, had this to say when I dropped in to see her the other day at her Temple of Delights to pay penance and homage to the Great and the Good: "Sam Taylor-Wood was born in London, England. She is a graduate of Goldsmiths College.

Before breaking out as an artist, Taylor-Wood worked at the Royal Opera House and managed the Camden Palace nightclub. In 1991, her work began to appear in a number of group exhibitions alongside that of contemporaries from Goldsmiths. Her breakthrough came in 1994 with the work Killing Time in which four people mimed an opera score. From that point multi-screen video works became the main focus of Taylor-Wood's work. Beginning with the video works Travesty of a Mockery and Pent-Up in 1996, Taylor-Wood began to use professional actors. Her work since 1996 has often featured celebrity friends.

Elton John was included in a large photo-work, and commissioned Taylor-Wood to make a promotional video starring Robert Downey Jr. for one of his records.

In 2002, Taylor-Wood was commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery to make a video portrait of David Beckham sleeping.

Taylor-Wood is also a long-time collaborator with the Pet Shop Boys having produced films for their Somewhere concerts at the Savoy Theatre, London. She has also been guest vocalist on two Pet Shop Boys produced songs - their rendition of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime... Moi non plus" and Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby". For the latter of these two releases, she used the pseudonym Kiki Kokova.

Taylor-Wood was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997 (that's due again soon, mes bloggy loves - I get all excited about the Turner Prize. Sad puppess that I am!), and won the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Young Artist at the 47th Venice Biennale.

In 2008, Taylor-Wood directed a short film Love You More, written by Patrick Marber and produced by Anthony Minghella (....j'adore), which was screened in Main Competition for the Palm D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

On 19 September 2008, Taylor-Wood and her art dealer husband, Jay Jopling, announced that they would be divorcing amicably for personal reasons.

In February 2009, Sam Taylor-Wood collaborating with Sky Arts chose Vesti la Giubba from Pagliacci to interpret. She commented: "I’m really happy to be involved in such a great project. I think by capturing one of opera's most moving moments in a film short, we have put a modern spin on the aria.""

Here are some linkies, should you wish to find out more:

Here

Here

Here and

Here

Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood makes photographs and films that examine, through highly charged scenarios, our shared social and psychological conditions.

Her work examines the split between being and appearance, often placing her human subjects – either singly or in groups – in situations where the line between interior and external sense of self is in conflict



In the celebrated film Still Life (2001), an impossibly beautiful bowl of fruit decays at an accelerated pace, creating a visceral momento mori.

Taylor-Wood has also explored notions of weight and gravity in elegiac, poised photographs and films such as Ascension (2003) and a series of self-portraits (Self Portrait Suspended I - VIII) that depict the artist floating in mid air without the aid of any visible support.



Sam Taylor-Wood was born in London in 1967 and has had numerous group and solo exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale (1997) and The Turner Prize (1998). Solo exhibitions include Kunsthalle Zurich (1997), Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek (1997), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC (1999), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (2000), Hayward Gallery, London (2002), State Russian Museum, St Petersburg (2004), MCA, Moscow (2004), BALTIC, Gateshead (2006), MCA Sydney (2006) MoCA Cleveland (2007) and the Contemporary Art Museum, Houston (2008).

All text courtesy of White Cube...

When Sam Taylor-Wood isn't to be seen driving around with a young man half her age - and why should she not when her Gallery Owner ex- is seen on a yacht squiring Lily Allen, she's a talented and interesting British artist...

I was aware of the buzz around her work... Her film of the sleeping(?) David Beckham, capturing his beauty, and so not his budgie-startling voice, had captured the Zeitgeist... People seemed interested in seeing famous people in peculiar and unusual situations...

I recently wine-blogged, and posted two pieces in one day by accident... Those of you who caught my Big Boys Don't Cry posting, showing famous men, actors, in truthfully depicted sorrow, before I deleted it in error, are lucky...

Some of Sam's images for me hark back to mediaeval portraits and still-lifes... And when I visited the Baltic art gallery in Gateshead a few years ago, and saw her pictures of these fabulous and famous men crying their hearts out, it entranced me thoroughly...

I hope you might find something in Sam's art to love too, mes bloggy Surrealistes, something that whispers softly to your gentle souls...