Gillian Wearing

One of the most influential conceptual artists of her generation, Gillian Wearing first gained recognition in the 1990s for groundbreaking photographs and videos that recorded the confessions and interactions of ordinary people she befriended through chance encounters. In its candor and psychological intensity, her work extends the traditions of portraiture initiated by Sander, Weegee and Arbus. Yet in her ongoing attention to technology’s role in the presentation of self, Wearing has presciently identified defining aspects of contemporary visual culture, from reality television to the rise of the selfie.
Published for Wearing’s first North American retrospective, Gillian Wearing: Wearing Masks traces the acclaimed artist’s practice from her earliest Polaroids and videos to her most recent production, including large-scale photographic self-portraits of Wearing in the guise of other artists; a more intimate body of self-portraits titled Lockdown; and installations and commissioned public sculpture. Essays by co-curators Jennifer Blessing and Nat Trotman provide an overview of Wearing’s oeuvre, and a “self-interview” by Wearing offers a revealing firsthand account of the artist’s practice, including her ongoing project Your Views (2013–), in which she has recently responded to the COVID-19 pandemic, and her exploration of AI technology in the video work Wearing, Gillian (2018).
Gillian Wearing (born 1963) became associated with the Young British Artists (YBAs) after graduating from Goldsmiths College in 1990, and went on to win the Turner Prize in 1997. She works equally in photography, video, sculpture, installation and, most recently, painting. Wearing became well known early on for her now-landmark piece Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992–93), for which she photographed almost 200 strangers with placards of their own making.

What does “family” mean today? Which notions and prejudices come to light with it? How is modern family life shaped these days? In her project A Real Danish Family, British artist Gillian Wearing (born 1963) poses these questions in ways that are both artistic and thought-provoking. The eponymous sculpture portrays a Danish family selected from 492 participating families of the most diverse composition. The exhibition Family Stories, opening for the unveiling of the sculpture in the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) in Copenhagen, also revolves around the family as the crystallization point for human relationships. Photographs, videos and sculptures explore relatedness and identity, and include the artist’s own family as an example. In a series of “self-portraits” the artist uses masks to slip into the roles of her siblings, parents and grandparents. The publication examines Wearing’s work and the theme of the family through the lens of art history, and traces the course of A Real Danish Family, a project that boldly questions patterns of thought in society.

Gillian Wearing’s work explores the connections between public and private, fiction and reality, and the relationship between artist and viewer.

This monograph provides an overview of the artist’s work from the early, iconic photographs of people holding up signs with written personal confessions or thoughts – entitled Signs That Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say (1992–93) – to her latest video Bully (2010) in which the roles of victims and perpetrators, actors and directors are blurred

The publication accompanies a major international survey of the artist’s work at Whitechapel Gallery, London; K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; and Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; which includes new photographic works, two portraits from her ongoing series of iconic photographers and still lives of flowers that are inspired by the rich symbolism of seventeenth-century Dutch painting.

100 full-colour illustrations and never-before-published archival material are accompanied by new texts by the exhibition’s curators, Daniel F. Herrmann, Doris Krystof and Bernhart Schwenk.