Sam Taylor-Wood: 'It has been an insane year'

Sam Taylor-Wood is sitting on a yellow sofa in her Clerkenwell studio, fidgeting. She fidgets quite a lot. "You'll see next month in The South Bank Show," she says, referring to the programme that has made her its latest subject. "I get very fidgety and very twitchy, both physically and in my more general life. One week I'll be doing an exhibition and then a film and then something else. I get really restless if I'm not challenged all the time." She grew up not far from here, on a Peabody estate, and likens her decision to re-settle in the area as a prodigal return. "I made good," she says.

We meet two weeks after Taylor-Wood and her husband Jay Jopling, the director of the fashionable White Cube gallery, announced that they are to separate after 11 years of marriage. Taylor-Wood's "people" request that I don't ask about the split, so I don't; but her empty ring finger speaks volumes, a glowering third presence in the room.

Taylor-Wood has offered herself up for interviews, which she once likened to root canal surgery, to promote her latest outpouring of work, to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public in the coming months. It is testament to her twitchiness, to her perpetual forward-motion, that she continues to be so prolific. "It's been an insane year," she says. "When I was pregnant I took the year off and did nothing and I think everything builds up and then there's this vomiting forth of ideas."

There is the short film she made with the late Anthony Minghella, Love You More, to be shown at this month's London Film Festival; there's the exhibition at White Cube, called Yes I No; there's the single produced by the Pet Shop Boys, a cover of the Eighties' hit "I'm In Love With a German Film Star"; there's the aforementioned South Bank Show. And last but not least, Taylor-Wood has also produced a special limited-edition of one of her photographs, the latest in our occasional series of art offers available to readers of The Independent.

"When I was asked if I had anything that might be right, I immediately thought of this print," she says of the new edition, After Dark (With Lights) (2008) – see offer below. "When I took it I knew it was a really beautiful shot, but I couldn't use it in the White Cube exhibition because it wasn't quite right."

Although the picture looks simple – a clown putting on his make-up in a large warehouse, part of a series of clown pictures that will make up the Yes I No exhibition – it was one of the most technical shoots Taylor-Wood has attempted. "It was really difficult to get the light coming into the warehouse: we did that with trucks and big lights and smoke machines. It looks so simple, but it took a lot of effort. That was the biggest production I've done in terms of lighting and rigs, but it was great fun."

The musical collaboration with the Pet Shop Boys might seem a little more odd, but in fact it makes perfect sense. The Boys rent a studio from Taylor-Wood ("my joke is: Neil is my Tennant") and they have all worked together before. She has produced videos for their Somewhere concerts at the Savoy Theatre and was a guest vocalist on the PSB's reworking of Serge Gainsbourg's "Je t'aime ... moi non plus" and their cover of Donna Summer's "Love to Love You, Baby".

"I'm not exactly a professional singer but I love karaoke," she says. "I'm a show-off and I always either do The Clash's 'Should I Stay Or Should I Go?' or Crystal Gayle's 'Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue?'. Why that one? I don't know, but I do know I can sing it reasonably and once I'm up there you can't get me off."

Taylor-Wood even dragged the South Bank Show crew along to a karaoke bonding session in Cleveland, Ohio. "The crew were following me around for eight months! I thought it would be more interesting, and make better telly than having Melvyn Bragg just looking retrospectively through my work. They were great fun but I got slightly ratty with them being there all the time.

"The South Bank Show is exciting for everyone else but totally traumatising and terrifying for me. The thing I'm most worried about everyone seeing is my bum!"

In person, Taylor-Wood is so lively and engaging that it's hard to believe she has endured so many hardships. She is almost as famous for her recovery from cancer – of the colon in 1997 and of the breast in 2000 – as she is for her famous friends (she was one of the few guests at the civil partnership of Elton John and David Furnish). She endured a six-month course of chemotherapy and then fought her way back to health with a combination of acupuncture, a hardcore no-meat, no-dairy diet and sheer willpower. She refused a course of drugs, because they would have made her infertile, and was rewarded with another baby, Jessie, now 17 months old.

"The only reason I don't mind talking about it is because when I was going through it I found it really useful to know about other people who had been through it and come out the other side all right. Generally you only read about people who haven't come through it...

"I thought that if I went down the road of melancholy and misery I was going to lose the battle – just to get in through hospital doors you've got to summon up all your strength from your boots. Having been through that makes you fairly fearless. My biggest fear, even now, is walking through hospital doors. I just stand there and hyper-ventilate – and then you have to go in.

"Suddenly your body is no longer your own. You have to very quickly become a professor of your disease; you need a crash course of understanding because you're offered so many different thoughts."

Taylor-Wood's practical, keep-on-moving attitude to her life is reflected in her instinctive approach to her work – ideas bubble around in her head and become all-consuming until she realises them; that, she says, provides the impetus for her perpetual forward-motion.

"Praise really isn't that important to me from anyone other than the people whose opinion I respect. I don't crave it – and I never read reviews any more. I know people say that, but I really don't read any of them. I have done in the past and it affects you so fundamentally that you know in the future that just one wrong word in an otherwise nice review can be really upsetting. I remember one particularly bad one after a show that I thought had been the best in my life. It blights everything – and yet it's just one person's opinion."

The Young British Artists, or YBAs, of whom Taylor-Wood was a leading light, may not be so young any more, but they are still significant players in world art markets. Damien Hirst's record-breaking sale of his works at Sotheby's last month showed that while all the financial world was losing its head, the modern-art market is one sector keeping its value. "The sale happening like that, at that time, will go down in history as one of the most insane days, ever," she laughs. "It was extraordinary."

But, as far as Taylor-Wood is concerned, it's all just here today, gone tomorrow. "I've got a total phobia about anything financial," she says. "As long as I've got some money in the bank and I can buy a new pair of shoes, it's OK." It might sound disingenuous coming from a woman who has made a small fortune for herself from the art world. But the funny thing is, after all Sam Taylor-Wood has been through, I believe her.

The exhibition Yes I No opens at White Cube Mason's Yard, London SW1, and No 1 The Piazza, London WC2, on 24 Oct. The single 'I'm In Love With a German Film Star' is released on 20 Oct. The short film 'Love You More' is screening on 24 & 27 Oct at the London Film Festival. 'The South Bank Show' on Sam Taylor-Wood is broadcast on 16 Nov

How to buy an exclusive edition of After Dark (with lights) (2008) by Sam Taylor-Wood

'The Independent Magazine' has secured 20 copies of 'After Dark (With Lights) (2008)' by Sam Taylor-Wood, exclusively for readers at the guaranteed price of £350. The print, produced by Counter Editions, is a digital LightJet C-Type print on Fuji crystal archive paper. Printed by Bayeux, London, measuring 50 x 80 cm (19.5 x 31.5 in) it is produced in a strictly limited edition of 175, and is signed, numbered and dated by the artist. It is also available framed (£535) in American black walnut with a dark oak stain, measuring 55 x 85 cm (22 x 34 in). The edition is offered on a first-come first-served basis from today, Saturday 18 October. To buy 'After Dark (With Lights) (2008)', phone Counter Editions on 020-7684 8888, Mon-Sat 10am-6pm, or log on to www.countereditions.com/independent. Delivery within the UK and VAT are included in the price. Delivery is by UPS courier and is within 28 days. For full terms and conditions about this offer, see countereditions.com, phone 020-7684 8888 or e-mail info@countereditions.com