EDUCATION RESOURCE
This Teacher Resource Kit is designed to assist you in your planning for learning experiences outside the
classroom (LEOTC). Programmes with a Gallery educator can be used to meet goals from specific curriculum
areas, or different curriculum areas simultaneously. Activities and resources in these kits can be adapted to the
age/level of your students. Activities are designed to support the key elements of exhibition interpretive
education and teachers are encouraged to undertake further extension activities.
This resource features:
•
Education programme plan with pre and post visit suggestions
•
Exhibition details
•
Brief biography on the exhibiting artist Sam Taylor-Wood
•
Artist themes and processes
•
Examples of art works
This resource has been developed for use in conjunction with your educational experience at City
Gallery Wellington. Check out our website for further details: www.city-gallery.org.nz
IMAGE CREDIT: Sam Taylor-Wood, Laurence Fishburne, 2002, Courtesy of the artist and Jay Jopling/White Cube, London
© the artist
Sam Taylor-Wood initiated and organised by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and toured to
New Zealand in partnership with City Gallery Wellington.
Principal Sponsor
Education resource compiled by Kay Benseman, Educator, City Gallery Wellington, Te Whare Toi 2006. City Gallery Wellington Schools Education
Programmes are supported by LEOTC (Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom), funded by the Ministry of Education. This kit is based on
material in the Sam Taylor-Wood Education Kit produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art Education Department in July 2006, written by
Simon Power with contributions by Rachel Kent, Jasmin Stephens and Justine McLisky.
1
SAM TAYLOR-WOOD
‘I am interested in how humans respond and react in moments of crisis.
I want to examine the physical manifestations of anxiety.’ 1
INTRODUCTION
Sam Taylor-Wood is an artist for whom the human subject is central. Working across
photography and film, she explores the physical dimension of human experience as well as
its more private, emotional side. As British critic Michael Bracewell observes, her art ‘takes
its place at the point of contact between psychology and destiny—the twin poles, if you like,
of the human condition: how we react to life’s journey’. From feats of physical strength and
endurance to moments of introspection and vulnerability, Taylor-Wood’s imagery invites
viewers into an indeterminate space in which public and private experience converge.
This exhibition brings together a selection of Taylor-Wood’s photographs and film works for
the first time in New Zealand, from the mid 1990s to the present.
In this exhibition Taylor-Wood presents her large photographic suite Crying Men (2002–04).
Featuring twenty-seven male actors in private moments of reflection and catharsis, it
presents an intimate, vulnerable portrait of contemporary masculinity while working against
public expectations associated with the ‘celebrity’ persona. The video work David (2004),
commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, London, features a languid David Beckham
asleep in his bed—a portrait of this iconic sporting figure that is unprecedented in its
intimacy and sensuality.
EXHIBITION DETAILS
Dates
8 October/Whiringa ā nuku 2006 –
28 January/Kohi tātea 2007
Location
City Gallery Wellington, Civic Square,
Wellington
Catalogue
Sam Taylor-Wood brochure, with
images and essay by curator,
Rachel Kent of the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Sydney.
A special reduced price for schools
and teachers of $5 (no 10% discount
applies to this)
IMAGE CREDIT: Sam Taylor-Wood, Hayden
Other resources Sam Taylor-Wood— Still Lives,
Christensen, 2002, Courtesy of the artist
Baltic Museum, 2 part set
and Jay Jopling/White Cube, London
$125 (currently on order);
© the artist
Sam Taylor-Wood—Contact
artist project $95; Sam Taylor-Wood exhibition DVD [not contains
nudity] $38.50; Sam Taylor-Wood posters $12; Sam Taylor-Wood
postcards $2
10% discount on all resources for teachers and schools.
Admission
FREE of charge for BOOKED education groups only
Admission charges apply to this exhibition;
Adults $7; Students/Concession $5 (this
includes students, community service cardholders, children age 5 to
17yrs, senior citizens); Child (under 5yrs) free; Family $15, Multiple
entry pass $18.
Website
Details of the education programmes are posted on our website:
www.citygallery.org.nz
Artist’s statement, ‘Sam Taylor-Wood wall text’, Sam Taylor-Wood curated by Rachel Kent, Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2006.
1
Education resource compiled by Kay Benseman, Educator, City Gallery Wellington, Te Whare Toi 2006. City Gallery Wellington Schools Education
Programmes are supported by LEOTC (Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom), funded by the Ministry of Education. This kit is based on
material in the Sam Taylor-Wood Education Kit produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art Education Department in July 2006, written by
Simon Power with contributions by Rachel Kent, Jasmin Stephens and Justine McLisky.
2
ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
±
Sam Taylor-Wood was born in London in 1967.
±
Graduated from Goldsmith’s College in London in 1990.
±
In 1997 she won the Illy Café Prize for Most Promising Artist award at the Venice
Biennale and featured in the controversial internationally touring exhibition of what
came to be known as ‘Young British Artists’, Sensation.
±
In the same year, Taylor-Wood’s work was included in Pictura Brittanica, another group
exhibition of British artists, which toured the world, including to the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sydney and Te Papa, Wellington.
±
Sam Taylor-Wood lives and works in London.
Since her first major solo exhibition at White Cube in 1995, TaylorWood has had numerous solo shows including at Fundació "La
Caixa", Barcelona; Kunsthalle, Zurich; Hirshhorn Museum,
Washington DC; Fondazione Prada, Milan; and Matthew Marks
Gallery, New York. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in
1998, and the Hayward Gallery, London, hosted a major survey of
her work in 2002. Taylor-Wood has also been commissioned to
work on several commercial photography projects. A recent solo
exhibition was Sex and Death and a Few Trees at Gallery Lorcan
O’Neill in Rome, 2005.
IMAGE CREDIT:
Sam Taylor-Wood, Self Portrait in a Single Breasted Suit with Hare, 2001,
Courtesy of the artist and Jay Jopling/White Cube, London, © the artist
ARTIST’S BACKGROUND
Sam Taylor-Wood’s solo exhibition at White Cube in 1995 was the first of many solo
exhibitions, nationally and internationally. Sam Taylor-Wood’s work in photography and film
features ‘an ironic and subversive use of the media, which centre on the creation of
enigmatic situations replete with a latent but explosive energy; situations in which any
number of things could happen.’ 2 Previous works Noli Me Tangere (1998), Wrecked (1996)
and the ‘Soliloquy’ series (1998-2000), demonstrate how Taylor-Wood:
“explores the boundaries between the sacred and the profane, fusing religious imagery
informed by Renaissance and Baroque painting with the secular, urban and contemporary
landscape that she inhabits. Her works compulsively examine and dissect the
contemporary psyche and the place of the individual within the social group. Many of her
works display the vulnerability and resilience of the human body and the self when tested
to the limit.” 3
Taylor-Wood’s photographs have embraced
an expanded, panoramic format as well as a vertical ‘portrait’
format. This exhibition focuses on the latter, in which single
subjects are presented in mid action or gesture—hovering,
tumbling, falling, dancing, sleeping, crying. Three related film
projections feature their performers in similar states of activity
and release. Taylor-Wood’s static and moving imagery is
informed by art-historical reference, religious iconography and
the desire for a form of physical or spiritual transcendence.
From the image of a young man hovering mid air (The Leap
2001)—the first of the artist’s ‘suspended’ works—to that of a
man tap-dancing before a prone human
IMAGE CREDIT: Sam Taylor-Wood, Falling II, 2003,
Courtesy of the artist and Jay Jopling/White Cube,
London, © the artist
Sam Power, Rachel Kent, Justine McLisky, Jasmin Stephens,
‘Sam Taylor-Wood Education Kit’, 2006, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
3 Ibid
2
Education resource compiled by Kay Benseman, Educator, City Gallery Wellington, Te Whare Toi 2006. City Gallery Wellington Schools Education
Programmes are supported by LEOTC (Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom), funded by the Ministry of Education. This kit is based on
material in the Sam Taylor-Wood Education Kit produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art Education Department in July 2006, written by
Simon Power with contributions by Rachel Kent, Jasmin Stephens and Justine McLisky.
3
form, a dove improbably balanced on his head (Ascension 2003), we are introduced to a
world of imagination and ambiguity. 4
ARTIST THEMES AND SUBJECT MATTER
“When you are making a photograph you have a memory bank of images that work their way in
subconsciously.” 5
Sam Taylor-Wood is an artist who is highly informed about the Western art tradition –
especially religious art, which she draws upon in her work. She alludes to, and directly
appropriates, the general visual characteristics of Renaissance and Baroque art. Her
fascination with the art of these periods reflects her interest in ideas about the place of the
spiritual in art. Influences on Taylor-Wood’s practice include; art-historical reference,
religious iconography and physical or spiritual transcendence.
±
ARCHITECTURE AS CONTEXT
Taylor-Wood uses architectural features as a setting for floating or falling figures in her work:
Falling IV uses single point perspective with vanishing point. This technique was invented by
the painters of the early Renaissance. It radically departed from previous depiction of
perspective by providing the viewer with the illusion of volumes in space on a flat picture
surface. The convergence of parallel lines gives a sense of foreground, middle ground and
distance. 6
The Falling photo series (2003), Strings (2003) and the Self Portrait Suspended photo series
(2004) feature barrel-vaulted ceilings, columns and arches. These images have strong
references to altar panels and ceiling paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque.
±
PORTRAITURE
Much of her work deliberately refers to the history of portraiture, using historical imagery and
‘re-contextualising it through the newer media of photography and film.’7 She challenges our
perception of portraiture through her use of different presentation of her portraits, such as
David (2004), where she extends ‘the portraiture tradition by using video to create a timebased portrait watched over a period of time rather than viewed as a static image.’ 8 The
series Crying Men was made from 2002-2004. This series has a strong documentary
photography feel. The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney explains that:
the images seem to capture a private moment as it happens. The images might appear
spontaneous but are in fact carefully constructed portraits.
The artist chose to work with models who are celebrity actors known to an international
audience, such as Hayden Christensen, Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman and Sean Penn. The
actors were not told beforehand that they would be asked to cry for the camera. This series
contains a variety of photographic techniques, compositions and viewpoints, all with various
effects. 9
±
SELF–PORTRAITURE
Sam Taylor-Wood has featured herself in her own work for may years. Her early self portraits
were about “trying to find where I fitted in, and, also realising that your work can be about
who you are.” 10 Personal events are referenced in the work Self Portrait in a Single Breasted
Suit with Hare (2001). This image deals with Taylor-Wood’s experience of living through
cancer. The work functions on a highly personal symbolic level. 11
Ibid
Interview with Clare Carolin, quoted in Bracewell, Michael, Jeremy Millar and Clare Carolin. Sam Taylor-Wood, Hayward Gallery,
London, Steidl Publishers, Gottingen 2002
6 Sam Power, Rachel Kent, Justine McLisky, Jasmin Stephens, ‘Sam Taylor-Wood Education Kit’, 2006, Museum of
Contemporary Art, Sydney
7 Ibid
8 Ibid
9 Power et al, ibid
10 Interview with Clare Carolin, quoted in Bracewell, Michael, Jeremy Millar and Clare Carolin. Sam Taylor-Wood, Hayward
Gallery, London, Steidl Publishers, Gottingen 2002
11 Power et al, ibid
4
5
Education resource compiled by Kay Benseman, Educator, City Gallery Wellington, Te Whare Toi 2006. City Gallery Wellington Schools Education
Programmes are supported by LEOTC (Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom), funded by the Ministry of Education. This kit is based on
material in the Sam Taylor-Wood Education Kit produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art Education Department in July 2006, written by
Simon Power with contributions by Rachel Kent, Jasmin Stephens and Justine McLisky.
4
c
d
c Sam Taylor-Wood, Jude Law, 2003, Courtesy of the artist and Jay
Jopling/White Cube, London © the artist
d Sam Taylor-Wood, Falling I, 2003, Courtesy of the artist and Jay
Jopling/White Cube, London © the artist
Education resource compiled by Kay Benseman, Educator, City Gallery Wellington, Te Whare Toi 2006. City Gallery Wellington Schools Education
Programmes are supported by LEOTC (Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom), funded by the Ministry of Education. This kit is based on
material in the Sam Taylor-Wood Education Kit produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art Education Department in July 2006, written by
Simon Power with contributions by Rachel Kent, Jasmin Stephens and Justine McLisky.
5
e
f
e Sam Taylor-Wood, The Leap, 2001, Courtesy of the artist and Jay
Jopling/White Cube, London, © the artist
f Sam Taylor-Wood, Michael Gambon, 2003, Courtesy of the artist and
Jay Jopling/White Cube, London, © the artist
Education resource compiled by Kay Benseman, Educator, City Gallery Wellington, Te Whare Toi 2006. City Gallery Wellington Schools Education
Programmes are supported by LEOTC (Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom), funded by the Ministry of Education. This kit is based on
material in the Sam Taylor-Wood Education Kit produced by the Museum of Contemporary Art Education Department in July 2006, written by
Simon Power with contributions by Rachel Kent, Jasmin Stephens and Justine McLisky.
6