Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing OBE RA (born 1963) is an English conceptual artist, one of the YBAs, and winner of the annual British fine arts award, The Turner Prize, in 1997. On 11 December 2007, Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Life and career

Early life

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 and squatted in Oval Mansions.

1990s

In the early 1980s, 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,

One of Wearing's first UK shows was held at the Chisenhale Gallery in east London, in June 1997.

In 1997, Wearing won the Turner Prize and exhibited videos such as 60 minutes silence which is a video of 26 uniformed police officers, but at first appears to be a photograph. Wearing said, "The piece is about authority, restraint, and control." She also exhibited Sacha and Mum showing emotions between a mother and daughter. Wearing described the piece as, "Things can not be finalized—- as far as emotions are concerned. They’re always in turmoil and can go to two polar opposites." Cornelia Parker, Christine Borland and Angela Bulloch were the other shortlisted artists.