Gillian Wearing

I really like this artist. A lot. Particularly her series 'Signs that say what you want them to say and not signs that say what someone else wants you to say'. I often feel like making art about you own feelings and opinions is good, but too limiting. I often wonder about the best way to get other opinions and thoughts ins, particularly people who don't label themselves artists who'd generally want to contribute to projects with you. This project seemed like the most straightforward, simple way to do that. And it was non-exclusive - she's just picked regular people around the streets to participate, which in my humble opinion is the perfect way to do it:

She also did a series around 2003 when she took photos of herself using prosthetics and heavy makeup, costume, and various props, dressed as different members of her family/close relations. This wasn't the only challenge. She also had to pick out specific family photos and replicate them, and whoever's photo she used had to approve the photo as being one that they accepted as a token of their likeness at a particular moment in time. There are six photos in total, here's a couple of them:

I found Dan Cameron's take on the series quite interesting: '.....Wearing also wants us to be aware that within a family, the separation between self and others is a more  subtle distinction, since in purely genetic terms we are the result of the mixing of our two parents. Yet, rather than serve as a release from the tension of ALBUM, the
similarities between Wearing and her kin make the impersonation more disturbing, as if she was, at some level, creating a simulation of herself from the components of her actual self.....'

Gillian's also done a while heap of other stuff, like a film called Drunk in 2003, which simple documents a couple of drunk guys staggering around her studio, and another film, Broad Street, documenting the typical behavior of teenagers in Britain, who go out at night and drink a heap of alcohol. I haven't seen either of these pieces, but they sound like they would be interesting.