Sam Taylor-Wood

Sam Taylor-Wood, b. 1967. Lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and London, United Kingdom. 

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. 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.

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. She was awarded the title of Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to British arts and culture in 2011. The artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, among others.