Sam Taylor-Wood
A filmmaker, visual artist, and photographer, Sam Taylor-Wood emerged as one of the Young British Artists in the 1990s, and has gone on to have a notable and varied career. In the early nineties, Taylor-Wood first gained attention for her fine-art photography, particularly for the photograph 26 October 1993, a spoof on Annie Leibovitz’s infamous portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which she re-created with Henry Bond. Taylor-Wood later turned to video, a medium that has since become the focal point of her work. In 2009, she gained acclaim in the film world when she was chosen to direct the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy. Her photograph and video works, most of which feature human subjects, explore social expectations, and the conflict between the inner and outer expression of self, as in her portrait of British football star David Beckham, in which Taylor-Wood captured him asleep, portraying an image of the athlete that falls well outside of the typical perceptions and representations of him.
Taylor-Wood has been the subject of solo shows at institutions such as the Kunsthalle Zurich, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the Hayward Gallery, the …
A filmmaker, visual artist, and photographer, Sam Taylor-Wood emerged as one of the Young British Artists in the 1990s, and has gone on to have a notable and varied career. In the early nineties, Taylor-Wood first gained attention for her fine-art photography, particularly for the photograph 26 October 1993, a spoof on Annie Leibovitz’s infamous portrait of John Lennon and Yoko Ono, which she re-created with Henry Bond. Taylor-Wood later turned to video, a medium that has since become the focal point of her work. In 2009, she gained acclaim in the film world when she was chosen to direct the John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy. Her photograph and video works, most of which feature human subjects, explore social expectations, and the conflict between the inner and outer expression of self, as in her portrait of British football star David Beckham, in which Taylor-Wood captured him asleep, portraying an image of the athlete that falls well outside of the typical perceptions and representations of him.
Taylor-Wood has been the subject of solo shows at institutions such as the Kunsthalle Zurich, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, the Hayward Gallery, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. Her work was included in the Venice Biennale in 1997 and she was awarded the Turner Prize in 1998.
