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Indepth Arts News:
"Sam Taylor-Wood"
2002-04-25 until 2002-06-21
Hayward Gallery
London, ,
UK
This is the first major London showing for Sam Taylor-Wood, an artist at the forefront of contemporary art. Taylor-Wood works with photography, film and video installation, testing the limits of her media, fusing genres and drawing freely on a variety of sources, from Renaissance painting to Hollywood cinema.
In Pietà (2001), a large-scale video projection based on Michelangelo’s Vatican sculpture, the artist struggles to hold actor Robert Downey Jr. in the pose of the dying Christ. Third Party (1999), shown for the first time in Britain, is an absorbing seven-screen video installation that propels the viewer into the midst of a dysfunctional cocktail party where ultimate party girl Marianne Faithfull surveys the scene impassively and Ray Winstone sulks in jealous rage.
More than any other artist of her generation, Taylor-Wood has investigated the mechanics of portraiture, exploring the manner in which facial and bodily expression, language and soundtrack can be manipulated to reveal the frailty, or strength, of an inner, psychological condition.
The exhibition will occupy the entire space of the Hayward, transforming it into a compelling theatre of the emotions, punctuated throughout with self portraits,which provide a biographical subtext for the rest of the work.
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