Gillian Wearing
(1963 - ) |
|
Winner of the Turner Prize Art Work
| Name: |
Gillian Wearing |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Birmingham, United Kingdom |
| Nationality: |
British |
| Birth: |
1963 |
| Death: |
|
| Website: |
|
| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
|
|
Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Winner of the Turner Prize |
| Medium: |
|
| Method: |
|
| Style: |
Conceptual Art |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Filmmaker
Photography
|
|
|
Biography
The video Drunk (1997-9), shown in Gillian Wearing s exhibition at London's Serpentine Gallery in 2000, focused on a group of street drinkers. Wearing is part of a long line of artists and writers who have portrayed dissolution and destitution in the capital (she has made most of her art in the south-east of the city, one of its poorest areas). William Hogarth's scenes of raucous eighteenth century debauchery and dereliction include a baby falling from the arms of a gin-soaked mother. During the Victorian period, Charles Dickens created a parade of grotesques, including the drunken nurse Sairey Gamp, while Dorothy Tennant, Lady Stanley's sentimental images of the urban poor were intended to attract sympathy. (There is a further link between the Victorians and Weaning, in that Thatcherite policy and its trumpeted return to 'Victorian Values' in the 1980s generated the unprecedented wave of homelessness in London that Wearing trained her camera upon.)
What is different about Weanngs vision of these city dwellers (and a defining feature of her practice, which all revolves around filming and photographing people) is its dispassionate, contemplative quality. There is little comedy in Drunk to break the tension as we watch the group aimlessly gather, disperse, argue, stumble and scuffle. Neither does the piece offer us a reassuring moral or didactic stance, the distance of disapproval differentiating us from these unsavory characters. The artist has cited the British tradition of 'fly-on the- wall' documentaries as a strong influence. By taking up some of the conventions of this form of filmmaking, but at the same time refusing to create a clear, critical standpoint or story line, Wearing exposes our expectations of' true life' tales and frustrates them. At the same time, Drunk also appeals to our taste for the distasteful. Wearing feeds this desire by allowing us to look in safety at a feature of our urban environment we usually hurry past. Turning the tables, she has also made us face figures of social authority by placing us, as viewers of the video 60 Minutes Silence (1996), in front of rows of uniformed police.
Questioning the way in which we interpret appearance is a strong theme in Wearing's work. In the series of photographs Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say (1992-3), people hold pieces of paper on which statements were written. A smart young man, in suit and tie, holds a sign saying 'I'm desperate'. There is often a striking disjunction between the writing and the individual holding it. In the video Homage to the woman with the bandaged face who I saw yesterday down Walworth Road (1995} Wearing re-enacted a scene she had observed, a woman walking along a South London street with her face mysteriously bound, highlighting the reactions of the people she passed, which ranged from anger to curiosity. Watching the video, it seems that what captured the attention was the fact that the covered face made it impossible for passers-by to 'read' this individual, hence the mixture of hostility and a need to find out about her.
Looking beneath the surface, Wearing has also explored the psychological complexities of dose relationships. In Sacha and Mum (1996), a mother and daughter move in a series of bewildering clinches from embracing to fighting. In 10-16 (shown at the Chisenhale Gallery in 1997) adults lip-synched to recorded interviews with children. The piece proved to be especially significant for Wearing, who was nominated for the Turner Prize on the basis of it, and, in 1997, became the second woman to win the prize. 2 into 1 (1997), shows a mother and her two eleven-year-old sons talking about their relationship. As in 10-16, Wearing switched their voices, so that the mother Up-synchs along to her children's voices, and they, in turn, mime her speech. Filming members of a family mouthing each other's words is a witty representation of the scripts that family members adhere to, the roles they play, in order to maintain the fiction of domestic harmony. Wearing's videos also reveal tension, cruelty and control in these relationships, emanating from both directions, parent to child and vice versa. And in both Sacha and Mum and 2 into 1 the filmmaking is not seamless and invisible. The video of the two women is sometimes played backwards creating a fractured jumpiness, and the speech of the mother and children has been manipulated. Again, Wearing emphasizes that her medium is a form of representation, not a reflection of a truth.
Perhaps the most compelling of Wearing's works to date are Confess all on video. Don't worry you'll be in disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian (1994) and Trauma (2000). The title of Confess all is a text that appeared in the personal column of London's Time Out magazine. Those who responded were filmed telling of involvement in crimes such as theft and sexual assault. Each speaker wore a wig or a joke-shop mask. The black humor of the ridiculous disguises did not diminish, but added to the disturbing atmosphere of this expose of the idea that confession can somehow lead to absolution. Masks also cover the faces of the participants in Trauma (again respondents to an advertisement), speaking of youthful experiences that left emotional scars. Unlike the masks in Confess all, which suggested criminal attempts to conceal, these masks were of smooth young faces, symbolizing the continuing presence of the younger, traumatized self in the adult. Wearing distils the painful distance between human experience and what can comfortably be spoken of. |
Samples of Work
|
|
