Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing OBE RA (born 1963) is an English conceptual artist.
Gillian Wearing was born in Birmingham. She attended Dartmouth High School in Great Barr, Birmingham. She moved to Chelsea, London to study art at the Chelsea College of Art.


In the early 1990s, Wearing started putting together photography exhibitions that were based around the idea of photographing anonymous strangers in the street who she had asked to hold up a piece of paper with a message on it. Of these "confessional" pieces.

Wearing stated, I decided that I wanted people to feel protected when they talked about certain things in their life that they wouldn’t want the public that knows them to know. I can understand that sort of holding on to things—it’s kind of part of British society to hold things in. I always think of Britain as being a place where you’re meant to keep your secrets—you should never tell your neighbors or tell anyone. Things are changing now, because the culture’s changed and the Internet has brought people out. We have Facebook and Twitter where people tell you small details of their life.

Approaching people on London streets, asking them to write something on a card and then photographing them as they displayed it. Private lives were given a sudden and revealingly painful exposure: a policeman holds a card reading ‘Help!'. With the introduction of video and more in-depth interviewing of her subjects, Wearing began to use adult actors lip-synching the recorded confessions of children, and subjects, solicited from advertisements placed in newspapers, making confessions while wearing masks. The introduction of actors signalled an increasingly dramatic element in her work and a shift away from the use of documentary techniques.

"I'm desperate" 1992-3

" I have been certified as mildly insane!"1992-3

I signed on and they would not give me nothing 1992-3

I like to be in the country 1992-3

Everthing is connected in life 1992-3

Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say

Gillian Wearing plays with codes by getting the subjects to right signs. She plays with the viewer and the perception of identity.  For example, the man in the suit, who the viewer would thing was affluent, portraits his inner feeling bu saying "I'm Desperate", is not what one expects.

I really love her work and Gillian Wearing has also had a huge inspiration on my final project for the Portraits, Identities, culture and self unit.