Sam Taylor-Wood

23 March - 18 June 2006

Renowned London-based artist Sam Taylor-Wood presents her first solo exhibition in Australia as part of the MCA’s Autumn 06 Season. It features photographic and video works from the late 1990s to the present with selected earlier pieces, all of which have a strong portraiture focus. Taylor-Wood's solo project complements the major exhibition Masquerade: Representation and the self in contemporary art on Level 3 of the Museum, in which she is also featured.

Taylor-Wood’s iconic photograph Self Portrait in a Single Breasted Suit with Hare (2001) introduces the exhibition, followed by significant video and photographic works including the Crying Men series of 2002-04. In these works the artist portrays twenty-seven male actors in private moments of reflection, crisis and catharsis. Both confronting and intimate, these and other related works in the exhibition explore ideas about masculinity and its private, largely unseen side. Also featured for the first time in Australia is the film work David (2004), commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, London, which features a sensual, sleeping David Beckham in the intimacy of his bed. Rendered with pathos, Sam Taylor-Wood’s depictions of human emotion and physicality draw upon the history of Western art in their composition and symbolism. From religious iconography to performance and dance, these works test the body’s limits as well as the individual psyche of the subjects portrayed.

ADMISSION: $10 Adult / $7 Concession / MCA Members free

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