Sam Taylor Wood : Fuck Suck Spank Wank

Marcelo Spinelli: Could you talk about your photograph, the Fuck, Suck, Spank, Wank?

Sam Taylor Wood: That was after. That was the same year, about six months later. Again, leaps and bounds; I was sort of moving. That piece I made specifically for the Lisson Show, Wonderful Life. There were a number of things going on there. I wanted to make a self portrait.

MS: Could you describe the piece first?

STW: Yes. It's a picture of me and it's taken in a photographic studio by a professional photographer. So I made it also look like it was in a photographic studio by having part of the light stand coming in and the reflector. I'm standing in a kind of Venus-like way, leaning but wearing this T-shirt saying 'Fuck, Suck, Spank, Wank'; and looking fairly aggressive but with my trousers dropped around my ankles.

The trousers round the ankles and that sort of pose can look like it's somebody put in quite a vulnerable position; [that they] have been asked to do that. But at the same time, quite confrontational. So it was the two things really working together. And also you can just see my eyes staring back at the camera in quite a 'look at what you're looking at' way. And just having all of that going on in the same photograph. and having the T-shirt with those sort of words on makes it suddenly a very aggressive act rather than a vulnerable one. So [it was] also a gesture of defiance in dropping my trousers. And this was made specifically knowing it was going to be shown at the Lisson. As almost like my, I don't know, my coming out.

MS: Is it, can you talk about where the T-shirt comes from? Is that important at all?

STW: Yes. It was made by the people called Queer as Fuck. One of them was a friend of mine and he was wearing the T-shirt when I went to see him. I was talking about my work at the time and kept looking at the T-shirt, and I just said to him, look could I borrow it? I just had something in my mind. And I liked the idea that the T-shirt belonged to quite a sort of political movement and the message was so clear.

MS: This idea of Queer politics is very much to do with empowering gay people, by taking up the negative images that were thrown at them and turning them into positive statements, more or less.

STW: Exactly. It almost worked for me as well; it wasn't creating so much a positive as a less vulnerable image, which is something that I'm constantly trying to work with in my work.

MS: Yes. Positive is not the right word, perhaps, but by taking away the negative connotations, and being in control somehow of that, rather than denying it - actually confronting people with it.

STW: Yes. And it's also quite funny, I mean I wanted to make the piece a bit humorous as well, so just to the left on the top of the fridge there is a cabbage and another pair of sunglasses as well. The cabbage was just in the fridge at the time and I thought, Oh, I'll have that there. It'd be quite funny. And it's good really, because everyone always says to me, that's like a break down of symbols going on in the picture; there's quite a lot to look at; and people always say to me, I can work out everything - except the cabbage. So it's quite nice to have it there, as a decoy.

MS: But was the Wonderful Life the first important show for you, as you said, as a sort of coming out, in terms of becoming part of this group of artists..?

STW: Kind of. I mean, it does sound like an odd sort of thing to say, now that I'm in this British Art Show, and the Brilliant one, but at the same time I never felt that I was part of all of that because I came late - you know, the late comer. I joined Goldsmiths' after Freeze had happened; I arrived there not knowing anything about Freeze and everyone was talking about these endless debates; and I didn't go to any of them because I didn't know what the fuck anyone was talking about. I didn't really engage in any of that until I left. And then also because I wasn't really part of that generation, I wasn't in any of those sort of seminal shows. But with Wonderful Life it was a mish-mash of lots of people in London. There wasn't a particular grouping there, it was just quite a lot of weird people.

MS: But was it important for you to be part of that show?

STW: Yes, definitely. Well it was the first time I showed anything anywhere with any kind of seriousness attached to it.