Sam Taylor-Wood

Sleep
 


'The Last Century, 2005

"A man sits in a pub as his cigarette slowly burns. The end.’ This is not an existential joke or indeed a bit of minimalist theatre by the great Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, but a description of one of Sam Taylor-Wood’s newest films, The Last Century, 2005. The scene, while recalling her earlier film works involving numerous characters, is entirely static apart from the involuntary blinking, twitching and barely-visible breathing of four motionless actors, all of whom are arranged around another, central figure as if in a group portrait painted by Rembrandt or Caravaggio"

- Ossian Ward