Gillian Wearing (born 1963) is an English conceptual artist, one of the Young British Artists, and winner of the annual British fine arts award, The Turner Prize, in 1997. In 2007 Wearing was elected as lifetime member of the Royal Academy of Arts in London.
In class we watched her short film “Dancing in Peckham”.
Dancing in Peckham is a 25-minute video that shows on an ordinary television monitor. The dancer, Gillian Wearing, under the vaulted glass roof, on the shiny pavement, has a look of intense seriousness on her face. She throws her hair about, shakes, gets down. She looks ridiculous, in a public place in broad daylight. She is not dancing to a Walkman, just to sounds in her head. The reason behind this was that she had always suffered from self confidence issues, and she figured she would do this to get over those issues. It was created to make the audience feel more embarrassed than her, because the dancing is so awkward and silly. I think this is very clever, and at first it make me laugh, but after a while i did start feeling awkward just watching her make a fool of herself!
Sophie Gollop 