Also Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson
Sigh was made in collaboration with the BBC Concert Orchestra and features a score made especially for it by Academy-Award winning composer Anne Dudley. Dudley comments, 'When I was composing this piece I had in mind Sam's wonderful large photographs from her series Wuthering Heights. This gave me the sense of loss that would transform onto the members of the orchestra as they played without their instruments. I knew that the sound of each section had to come from the right screen and this allowed me to think about the music travelling around the room. Also, I wanted the listener to be able to move around the room and experience a different perspective of sound – very much like strolling through an orchestra. All the sections rely on each other to complete the soundscape and avoid a greater loss.' Eight-screen projection.
The title of this piece is the well-known warning of Jesus to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection. It translates to Touch me not. This biblical scene gave birth to a strong iconographical tradition in Christian art, from late antiquity to present. Here, the denial of hope and redemption is removed from its religious context. 16mm film. Dual-screen projection.
A man masturbates in the desert.
Informed by cinematic and documentary traditions, Taylor-Johnson has been working with photography, film and video in London since the early 1990s. She presents characters in situations of isolation and self-absorption, their familiar, even mundane, surroundings and poses belying more or less hidden states of emotional crisis. This piece explores the difficult distinctions 'between reality and unreality, life and theatre', public and private, by putting the viewer in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether the action is genuine or staged. This discomfort persists with Brontosaurus, which is clearly taking place in a private space.
1996 Sam Taylor-Wood video art piece focusing on a naked singer
The drama tells the story of Lennon's teenage years and the start of his journey to becoming a successful musician. The story also examines the impact on his early life and personality of the two dominant females in his childhood
A biopic centered on English singer and songwriter Amy Winehouse.
A string quartet, dressed in black tie, seated in an arc that curves away from the viewer, play part of Tchaikovsky's String Quartet No. 2 in F major Op. 22. The piece is titled Andante ma non Tanto (which, crudely translated, means faster, but not too much). They sit in the sumptuous surroundings of the Crush Room at the Royal Opera House, London. Above them suspended by wires, which flick in and out of view as the light catches them, is a ballet dancer. He is naked apart from shorts and the harness. The dancer rests just above the musicians' heads as they play Tchaikovsky's melancholic piece. The dancer moves rhythmically and slowly, his feet almost brushing their bows as they play. 35mm film. Single-screen projection.
The graceful, ephemeral longing highlighted in this work is brought back down to earth with the title – after Van Halen's Jump. Single-screen projection.
Two teenagers are drawn together by the Buzzcocks' single 'Love You More' during the summer of 1978.
