December 11, 2007

Gillian Wearing is an British artist born in 1963. Her conceptual approach is said to be behind the ubiquitous signs we now see in social media, signs with some message. These signs were apparent in art work Wearing did in the 1990s. "Her breakthrough was a series of around 600 photographs called Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say (1992-93)..."
She won the Turner Prize in 1997. In 2011 she received the honor of an Order of the British Empire award for her artistic contributions. She lives in London, with another artist, Michael Landry.

According to an interview she gave to Alastair Sooke in 2012, 

her art lays bare its own artifice...she has always gone about her business quietly, examining how ordinary people present themselves in public and private in a series of subtle photographs, videos and films.

After graduating from Goldsmiths, she started creating portraits of her own. She soon demonstrated a knack for getting people to reveal their innermost thoughts. “Everyone’s got a secret,” she tells me – and this skill still underpins her art today.....
"I work within a language that I feel I created", she says, "within that realm of documentary, fiction, portraits, people – all the things that really matter to me." 

We take an example of this documentary approach in this bit of dialogue in her work:

Me and my mum, I think we're more like our cat Rebecca, 'cause neither me or my mum change our clothes that much and we ... [Second actor's voice:] Me and my cat climb scaffoldings and when we get to the top we look down and look at all [the scenes].

This last quote is from Gillian Wearing, by Russell Ferguson, Donna M. De Salvo, John Slyce (1999 ).

Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London on December 11, 2007,