(Above) Sam Taylor-Wood, Ghosts II (2008). Picture courtesy White Cube, © the artist
Exhibition: Ghosts, Brontë Parsonage Museum, until November 2 2009
The Brontë Parsonage Museum is continuing its innovative series of exhibitions drawing parallels between the work of contemporary artists and the literary output of the Brontë sisters with a new photographic exhibition by Sam Taylor-Wood.
A series of landscape photographs, Ghosts was shot on the moors near Top Withens – the fictional setting for Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights – posing as bleak and unremitting a landscape as the brutal portrayal of heightened passion and suffering found in the famous novel.
The photos are also suffused with further symbolic references to Emily Brontë's work. In Ghosts II, two solitary leafless trees, twisting towards each other, seem to embody Cathy and Heathcliff, and throughout the series Taylor-Wood seems to capture the very wildness of the air that inspired Brontë’s novel.
Originally exhibited as part of Taylor-Wood's 2008 White Cube show, Yes I No, the photographs have been resized to fit the Parsonage and are exhibited in the period rooms of the Museum as part of its 2009 Contemporary Arts Programme.
(Above) Sam Taylor-Wood, Ghosts X (2008). Picture courtesy White Cube, © the artist
"Exhibiting such powerful work by such a prominent artist is tremendously exciting," says Jenna Holmes, Arts Officer at the Museum.
"As well as showcasing the ways in which the Brontës continue to influence contemporary culture, Ghosts is also an important addition to the strong legacy of landscape photography in the area.
"We hope that by exhibiting Ghosts in the place which inspired it, new layers and connections will be drawn between the work and the Parsonage, as well as offering the public a unique opportunity to see important contemporary art in an unusual setting."
Taylor-Wood shot to prominence in the 1990s as one the YBAs (Young British Artists), together with Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, and is a veteran of the Venice Biennale and a Turner Prize nominee. In 2004 she famously exhibited a film of David Beckham asleep at the National Portrait Gallery, which is now in their permanent collection.
The exhibition has been made possible with the support of Arts Council England and the City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council.
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