Gillian Wearing

Overview

Throughout the past two decades, Gillian Wearing’s films, photographs and sculptures have investigated public personas and private lives. Since the beginning of her career, the artist has drawn from techniques of theater, reality television and fly-on-the-wall documentary-making to construct narratives that explore personal fantasies and confessions, individual traumas, cultural histories, and the role of the media. Anonymity through elaborate masks, costumes and role-play has remained a critical part of Wearing’s practice and influential investigation of the ways in which individuals present themselves to others when the self is temporarily concealed.

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Works

Me as Jean Cocteau after Berenice Abbott, 2022

PERMANENT INSTALLATION: Millicent Fawcett, Parliament Square, London, 2019

Me as Cahun Holding a Mask of My Face, 2012

Installation view at Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2012

Self Portrait as My Mother Jean Gregory, 2003

Self Portrait as My Father Brian Wearing, 2003

Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry, You Will Be In Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian..., 1994

Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say (I'm Desperate), 1992-1993

Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say (Work towards world peace), 1992-1993

Me as Jean Cocteau after Berenice Abbott, 2022

Biography

Born in 1963 in Birmingham, Wearing presently lives and works in London. She received a bachelor of technology degree in art & design from London’s Chelsea School of Art in 1987 and a BFA from Goldsmiths' College, University of London in 1990. An important member of the Young British Artists, Wearing was awarded the Turner Prize in 1997.

Important solo presentations include Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2022), Life: Gillian Wearing at Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH (2018), Behind the mask another mask: Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun at National Portrait Gallery, London (2017), Gillian Wearing at Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, Valencia, Spain (2015), Gillian Wearing at White Chapel Gallery which traveled to KK20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany; Pinakothek der Moderne, Museum Brandhorst, Munich, Germany (2012-2013), Confessions: Portraits, Videos at Musée Rodin in Paris (2009), Living Proof at ACCA, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne (2006), Snapshot at Bloomberg Space in London (2005), Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, Finland (2004), and Mass Observation, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2002 and traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and to Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal in Canada (2003).

The artist has also produced a number of permanent installations and public projects, including Gillian Wearing: Diane Arbus, commissioned by the Public Art Fund, currently on view at Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park, New York, Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere: The Making of the Millicent Fawcett Statue for Parliament Square by Gillian Wearing, Firstsite, Colchester, UK (2019), A Real Birmingham Family in Centenary Square outside the new Library of Birmingham, UK (2014), Gillian Wearing: Family Monument, Galleria Civica di Arte Contemporanea, Trento, Italy (2007).

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Exhibitions