Gillian wearing happened into art by chance while working for an animation firm where they encouraged her to apply to art school. She now is an admired artist who works with video, photography and sculpture.
Wearing was influenced by the documentary movies that she watched as a child, including “The Up Series” and “The Family” (Weintraub). The Up series is a series of documentary films that have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old. So far the documentary has had eight episodes spanning 49 years, one episode every seven years (Wearing). The Up series started as a political documentary, but it had transformed into a film about human nature and existentialism, which is something that ultimately inspired and influenced many of the series that Wearing has completed.
MISSION/AUDIENCE:
Her audience is people who seek the reality, mainly about other people or lives specially. Because Wearing uses strangers as the subjects for a lot of her projects, people are given a different insight, or realities, on other people’s lives. As an artist, Wearing has said that she goes through life making a lot of compromises and having to accept certain situations. Wearing is inspired by people who go through life without compromise and stick to their character, even when that means they are unemployed or don’t have any relationships. In a world that is willing to be elastic, these people that Wearing is inspired by, stick resolutely to this one path. Wearing records and documents these people that stick to their guns, but she also captures people who don’t, which uncovers those inner secrets that those people may not be comfortable with showing their true self. She could be considered a social scientist, as she produces these different series that reveal true identities, and exposes the distortions in assumptions (Weintraub). Wearing creates a platform for people who feel silenced to speak and gives the people who may be deemed as uninterested something to listen to.
WORKS:
ALBUM (2003)
Wearing’s photographs explore how public and private identities of ordinary people are masked, and are intentional in hiding different truths from their lives. She tends to blur the lines of reality and fiction, and this is seen in her portraits and especially her self portraits. For her series Album, Wearing recreated old family snapshots using silicone masks fabricated with the help of experts from Madame Tussauds (Wearing). This disguise is meant to reveal aspects of her identity rather than conceal it. A quote by Wearing says, “What I love about photographs is that they give you a lot and also they withhold a lot.” By putting a version of someone else’s face on hers she is metaphorically taking their identity and pretending to be someone else.
SECOND SLIDE:
This work can tell us a lot about the society that we live in, especially because social media has become such a growing factor. We are constantly “masking” ourselves online. We edit pictures, add filters, crop things out, to create this ideal or perfect depiction of ourselves that we want people to see. But ultimately it isn’t real, it’s only what we want people to see. We conceal our identity online, and because of that people make assumptions based on what they are shown with the pictures that you post. They are completely unaware of the person that is under the “mask” of your social media page, but instead have this false notions of who they believe you are.
Confess All On Video. Don’t Worry You Will Be in Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian Version II (1994)
https://mcachicago.org/Collection/Items/1994/Gillian-Wearing-Confess-All-On-Video-Dont-1994
Wearing deals with this relationship between public and private in a lot of her work, and that is especially seen in her confession series.
This series is a colour video lasting slightly under thirty-six minutes that features ten scenes, each showing a disguised person telling a secret in an unedited monologue (Hodge). The individuals’ disguises vary in character, but all of the speakers are depicted from the shoulders upwards (Eler). In some cases they gaze directly at the camera, while in others they look away. The individuals’ disguises vary in character. The costumes they wear are completely bizarre consisting of masks, which Wearing was a fan of using in her work, wigs and beards, sunglasses, anything really to cover their true identity (Hodge).
(SLIDE TWO OF PRESENTATION OF SERIES)
In order to create this work, Wearing had to create a trusting relationship with her subjects.This is a very intimate piece as it depicts another relationship between viewer and subject. The videos are presented in these box like structures, similar to where you would go to confess at a church. This creates an intimate space for the viewer and subject, which ultimately presents this idea that you watching and listening these people, while having no idea who they are, confess some of their most hidden secrets, some of which are terrible, and you are expected not to judge them, like a real confession is like.
(SHOW VIDEO)
Some were very raw and completely shocking including, “Hi, I’m a transvestite.”
“My confession is drugging a man, robbing his house, and stealing his credit card.” But through this these people were able to address the burden of keeping a secret guilt.
Here, Wearing is offering these people a platform to speak their truths. She assured their anonymity by providing materials to disguise their identities. Hidden behind these halloween-like masks, each person revealed all.
It emphasizes this idea that no matter who you are, or what social class you’re in, everyone has a part of their life that they wish to conceal. Everyone has done something deemed deviant, or something they’re ashamed of. And everyone deserves a place to confess. Wearing gives regular people like you and I that a chance to speak their truths, but still hide their identity. Everyone has their own secrets, some of which may be surprising, what compromises has someone made.
Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say, (1992-1993)
Gillian Wearing credits her Signs project as her breakthrough (Wearing). The complete series of Signs is comprised of over fifty colour photographs. Through this project, she is able to gain the trust of others and enlists them to disclose the raw truths of their lives in front of her lens (O'Reilly).
Process: she approached hundreds of randomly selected individuals and provided them with a blank sheet of paper, a pen, and the occasion to write whatever they chose. The individuals were then photographed holding their thoughts in their hands.
Wearing wanted something that involved collusion. First by the individual agreeing, and then they would have to think and say something that they felt. When looking at what the person has written, it challenged Wearings own perception of them. This kind of idea plays with these preconceived notion that we have when we are first introduced to someone. We have this idea of who they are based on how they look, but our perception of them can easily be proven wrong when we get close to them or start talking to them. Wearing plays with this relationship between written self-disclosures and the appearance of the persons who wrote them. This project confirmed the discrepancy between assumption and conclusion. It demonstrated the idea that our judgements of a person can be very false, since we are basing them off an appearance of another person. Especially in the contemporary world we need to conscious of how we judge someone or what we think about them, because our assumptions of another can be wrong.
SECOND SLIDE:
I think in regards to modern and contemporary society with different social media platforms, this project is important. People often portray these “perfect” lives that they want others to see online, and if you take away the signs in Wearing’s images that’s what you have- you have this image of what someone looks like or what they appear to be, but then you bring the truth into it, which is what the sign does. And I think the strongest example of this is the Business Man holding up a sign that has “I’m desperate” written on it. Outwardly, he looks like this composed and polished man, and you can easily draw many assumptions about his personal life and his success based on his dress, but in reality his inner truths and inner thoughts reveal something quite different. That’s what the sign is able to show. A quote from Wearing says, “We live in a society which is always telling us what to think and what we should or shouldn’t do.”
Conclusion:
Gillian Wearing gives regular people that she simply encounters on the street a voice. She presents herself as a person who doesn’t compromise. She allows people to confess to millions something that they have been hiding for years, but still have the safety of being anonymous. She allows them to defy the stereotypes or perceptions that people have made about them with a simple white sheet of paper, underlying that not everything that you see, especially on social media, is what you should believe.
Wearings work still plays a part in our world, especially with the advances in technology and modern society, and especially in regards to social media.
Social media is an everlasting presence in our society, and I believe that Wearing’s work touches on that by the people in this work masking their true identities. Many people on different social media platforms hide, or “mask”, who they really are, and us as the viewer are meant to assume that that is who they truly are. However, in reality, they are hiding a part of themselves. Wearing’s work forces us to believe that there is more than what meets the eye. That our assumptions may not always be deemed correct.