Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing’s candid videos and photographs reveal the disconnect between inner lives and public personas. They alternately embrace ironic, confessional, poignant, and unsettling sensibilities. Inspired by documentary television, Wearing’s portraits grant access to the inner lives of strangers and to the artist herself. Some of her most famous works include 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 stopped random passersby in London, inviting them to write their thoughts on a card before photographing them, and films such as Confess All on Video. Don’t Worry, You Will Be in Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian (1994), in which her subjects don disguises and confess their deepest secrets. Wearing won the Turner Prize in 1997. Her work belongs in the collections of the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Tate, and England’s Arts Council Collection.