Sam Taylor-Wood

This was the first major London showing for Sam Taylor-Wood, an artist at the forefront of contemporary British art. Taylor-Wood works with photography, film and video installations, 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 Junior in the pose of the dying Christ. Third Party (1999), shown in this exhibition 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 Faithful 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. This is particularly apparent in works such as Pent Up (1996), a compelling study of failed communication between men and women.

The exhibition occupied the entire space of the gallery, transforming it into a compelling theatre of the emotions, punctuated throughout with self-portraits, which provided a biographical subtext for the rest of the work.

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Sam Taylor-Wood