DAVID by Sam Taylor-Johnson

 

South Terminal J, post-security

Gate J7

 

DAVID by Sam Taylor-Johnson

Now screening!

June 4 - July 25, 2026

 

Sam Taylor-Johnson (b. 1967)

David, 2004

Digital video, 107 min.

 

David Beckham feels familiar to us as a subject from the football field, advertising hoardings and paparazzi shots. Here the artist captures the international icon in an intimate setting, taking a siesta after a training session for his team at the time, Real Madrid FC. Created in a single, long take, this reverential and painterly film invites us to share the artists’ private view of her subject. Simply lit from one light source, Taylor-Johnson drew on diverse influences, from Michelangelo’s David (1501-1504), which shares Beckhams’ name to Pop Artist Andy Warhol’s film Sleep (1964). She says: “Filming while he was asleep produces a different view from the many familiar, public images.”

 

Commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery, London.

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST:

Sam Taylor-Johnson is a British visual artist and filmmaker whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses photography, video, and feature film. For nearly 40 years, her collaborative work has engaged in an enquiry into psychological interiority and the sociocultural narratives through which both selfhood and collective consciousness are shaped.

 

Born in London, UK, Taylor-Johnson studied sculpture at Goldsmiths College (London), alongside a generation of British artists who came to prominence in the 1990s. From the outset, her work has explored the complexities of lived experience. In her early photographic practice, she examines the tensions between external perception and self-identification. Similarly, in formative video works, the artist constructs emotionally charged tableaux in which couples, locked in fraught exchanges, attempt to navigate the complexities of intimacy and connection.

 

Across her work in both art and film, Taylor-Johnson draws the private into the public realm, exposing the dissonance between inner life and public persona. Often working with prominent cultural figures, as in her hour-long 2004 video portrait of David Beckham sleeping, Taylor-Johnson teases out the inner lives of her subjects, distilling those moments in which the private self slips, unbidden, into view.

 

After showing at the Venice Biennale (1997) and being nominated for the Turner Prize (1998), Taylor-Johnson gained international acclaim, with solo exhibitions at major museums across Europe. Encouraged by Anthony Minghella, she directed the Palme d’Or-nominated short ‘Love You More’ (2008) and her feature debut ‘Nowhere Boy’ (2009), followed by ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ (2015), ‘A Million Little Pieces’ (2018), and ‘Back to Black’ (2024). While her films have won BAFTA nominations and awards, her studio practice has remained constant, recently exhibiting self-portraits in Rome that explore the tension between body and mind. Through her embrace of diverse creative modalities, Taylor-Johnson has continued to address the psychic friction of selfhood, drawing out the tragedies and joys that arise when the inner self collides with the outside world. 

 

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