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Gillian Wearing |
Gillian Wearing’s Album, a suite of six larger-than-life-size digital prints, gives new meaning to the notion of a family resemblance. All the photographs in the series are self-portraits Wearing made by recreating old photographs from her family album. Using specially made masks, wigs, body suits, and clothing, the artist transformed herself into various members of her family: her mother at age twenty-one, a young, tuxedo-clad image of her father, her smiling maternal uncle Bryan, her sister Jane, and brother Richard. Also included is an image of Wearing herself, not as she looks today, but as a teenager. In each case, the artist’s eyes are the only visible evidence of her actual, forty-year-old features. Wearing explains: “I was interested in the idea of being genetically connected to someone but being very different. There is something of me, literally, in all those people – we are connected, but we are each very different.”
Gillian Wearing is known for her photographs and videos that explore human relationships and social behavior – private, public, and personal. She also acknowledges an affiliation with documentary photography and film. To make the Album series, which she began in 2001, Wearing collaborated with a talented team of individuals (some of whom have worked for Madame Tussaud’s wax works) who sculpted, cast, painted, and applied hair to create the masks, wigs, and body suits used in these photographs. The elaborate disguises the artist wears, when combined with the snapshot “realism” of the original images on which they are based, create an eerie fascination that serves to reveal aspects of her identity rather than conceal it.
A savvy slant on the traditional notion of a portrait, this suite of photographs adds significantly to the Gallery’s collection of large-scale photography, and is a thought-provoking addition to our collection of portraiture in all media. The ways in which contemporary artists have challenged the traditional view of a portrait as the depiction of a sitter’s likeness are many and varied. The Gallery recently acquired a series of large photographs by Matthew Barney of fictional characters from his Cremaster film series, including three photos of the artist transformed into the roles he plays in the films. These photographic portraits evoke both the grand tradition of painted portraits and the commercialism of Hollywood promotional photos, but they depict imagined characters. While real people are featured in Wearing’s self-portraits, they, too, are fabricated and based on familiar photographic formats – the snapshot and the portrait studio photo. The use of familiar photographic genres is combined with the use of masking and disguise in the photographic work of Cindy Sherman as well. Sherman transforms herself using makeup, wigs, and costumes in photographs that mimic and mock female stereotypes and mass media imagery. Sherman’s exploration of the cultural coding of images in popular culture subsumes her likeness, whereas Wearing’s disguises link her to her familial roots. All three of these artists are represented in the Gallery’s collection and use photography, portraiture, fiction, and reality in unique and simulating ways.
- Jennifer Bayles, Educator for Special Projects