Sam Taylor-Wood

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2005

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the artist Sam Taylor-Wood. She is known for her photography and short films, including 'David' - a film of the footballer David Beckham sleeping - and her 365-degree photograph that was wrapped around the Selfridges store in central London. She is one half of art's most glamorous couple - her husband is the art dealer Jay Jopling.

Her route into art was scattered and uncertain. Although she knew she wanted to study art, she ended up taking a BTech in fashion before studying art at Goldsmiths. In 1997 she was awarded a prize as the most promising new artist at the Venice Biennale, but the same year saw the birth of her daughter and within months she was diagnosed with colon cancer. She fought it off only to find within a few years, that she was suffering from breast cancer. She emerged from illness with a major show at the Haywood Gallery - said to be the youngest person to be granted a retrospective there. She now says that her illness has given her a drive to keep working - and to do whatever seems the most fun.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Tiny Dancer by Elton John Book: Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes Luxury: Karaoke machine

Transcript

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0:22.4	helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all
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0:34.9	check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:42.2	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:45.3	The program was originally broadcast in 2005, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
0:50.7	Music was Sue Lawley.
1:07.4	My castaway this week is an artist.
1:27.5	She's already won the most promising new artist prize at the Venice Biennale, been nominated for the Turner Prize and had a major retrospective of her work at London's Haywood Gallery. Married to a successful gallery owner, she moves in star-studded circles, many of whom David Beckham, Jude Law, Dustin Hoffman, appear in her work. But none of this came easily.
1:29.5	Her parents had divorced, and her mother, who'd taken her to live in a yoga centre in Sussex,
1:34.7	then walked out on her when she was doing her O-levels,
1:37.5	and she struggled to win a place at the college that got her started.
1:41.1	Then, at the height of her success, she was diagnosed with cancer and had a mastectomy.
1:46.7	Both background and illness feature strongly in her work. You're afraid of the moment, she says,
1:52.7	when somebody says, right, time's up and you're not ready. She is Sam Taylor Wood. Intimations
1:59.3	of mortality then, Sam. So you rush around saying yes to everything and you keep going.
2:03.6	You're frightened to stop.
2:04.7	I do.
2:05.3	I find it very difficult to say no to a lot of opportunities that come my way because I always
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