Gillian Wearing

Consistently inventive and challenging, the art of Gillian Wearing reflects upon the complexities and constructs of society. Her work often documents the everyday lives of the strangers who surround us, allowing the audience to appreciate both the disparate and mutual aspects of experience. Her ability to transgress well established boundaries is a particularly compelling aspect of her practice; anonymous collaborators reveal their deepest secrets, and personal anecdotes are redubbed onto the unlikely faces of others.The artist herself also appears, most notably in the iconic work Dancing in Peckham, (1994) in which the artist dances for 25 minutes in a shopping arcade to a soundtrack that exists only in her head, while passers-by take little interest and go about their daily business. Whether they surprise or disturb us, Wearing's works reveal our own relationships to social and personal boundaries, and raise questions about our own characters and conditioning.