In her series Five Revolutionary Seconds, begun in 1995, the artist plays with the double meaning of the word “revolution”. She placed herself in the middle of an upper class/feudal flat with a camera made for taking aerial photographs, having arranged with actors and actresses that they play through more or less stormy, emotionally charged scenes. Then a 360 degree panoramic shot with an exposure time of 5 seconds was made. With one revolution of the camera the artist captures revolutionary moments because there is always a built-in shock element in the poetic, genre image.It is cinema, frozen into a tableau vivant. Taylor-Wood uses the panorama, a pictorial idea that was invented at the end of the 18th century, to create spectacular illusions. The tension between the flat photo and the curve of the panorama room needs precise observation if one is to be able to analyse the relationship of the figures in the picture to one another and to the viewer. As with Chardin, they are completely entangled in their own world, caught up in it, and they show no awareness of the presence of an onlooker. The symbolic microcosm of the picture suggests a world which is not depicted in a documentary sense but which functions as an allegory. Anything could happen, and nothing will.

Brigitte Huck, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)