Sam-Taylor Wood creates video works and performances herself within the context of her experience in the film industry. Human figures become isolated, exposed to the viewer yet contained within the boundaries of the set they inhabit and the character they have temporarily become. There is a sense of cathartic emotion within much of the work - crying, shouting, falling all take prominence. Yet there is subtly, an inarticulateness that suggests a complexity to the characters and an ambiguity to the scene that allows the viewer a more universal experience in terms of emotion and identity - 'personality as performance' (Dear God, how much longer do I have to go?, Michael O'Pray, 1996). This universally relatable, emotionally raw use of character is something I am conscious of myself - the artist as an actor, a representation of the very real emotion, experience and sense of identity I wish to express. Other facets of Taylor-Wood's work that I find relevant include her use of absurdity and actions/images that seem out of context (such as the nude dancer in Brontosaurus), the equilibrium found in tragic humour - sadness, loss, failure met with objects or actions that often amuse - falling, nudity, balloons (Escape Artist (Multicoloured)) and the sense of vulnerability (particularly but not confined to the masculine figure) that is explored through these devices.
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The artist enters the frame, already in which a group of chairs stand arranged in a loose circle. Standing on one chair, the artist stacks each subsequent chair on one another underneath him, making a tower on which he is standing. Unable to find a foothold upon stacking the last chair, he falls. An inevitable fall, devoid of melodrama yet somehow painful all the same - in its embarrassment, its obviousness, its purposelessness yet its clearly intentional happening. The artist has premeditated, composed and executed his own demise. Like a human moth, the artist makes a succession of desperate attempts to reach the heart of the light source which attracts him. For this figure, there seems to something more desirable, perhaps even immaterial to the arrangement of plastic casing, bulbs and wires we so rely on. Unlike the mythical character from which this piece lends its name, the artist does not reach his illuminated destination but, armed with only the modern wings of a polyester tracksuit, fails to achieve his goal. This failure and the resulting isolation this current day Icarus succumbs to is born from a number of recent reflections. Firstly, on a personal basis - feelings of failure, weakness and emasculation are expressed as action and narrative. Secondly, the work of Bas Jan Ader continues to affect my practice - he too is concerned with human failure and personal insignificance as he consciously accepts the inevitability of gravity in his Fall series (www.basjanader.com)  Icarus (digital still) |
