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Images and Screenshots from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/mar/27/gillian-wearing-takeover-mask
Gillian Wearing’s self-portraits are very unusual, but
innovative. Her use of a mask is very different from the usual. Instead of
wanting to become someone completely different, she often changes into herself,
but her past self or different versions of herself in the form of her family.
Above you can see the process of her work, how and why she is interested in
what she does. I’m inspired by Gillian Wearing’s self-portrait work, and I will
be working with self-portraiture and masks also.
These images below are self-portraits. Instead of becoming
someone completely different, she becomes herself, again. She relives how she
was, even how she is now. Her use of masks have become somewhat of a memory.
She is replacing original images of how she actually looked in that moment in
time, to this moment in time with how she looks now. What I find in particular
very interesting is that she wants to become herself. The masks could represent
how she feels. She may not know who she is now, but she knows who she was, and
who her family are so she becomes something she knows. Masks have that quality
about them. You know who the mask is, given it has a face. But with a gas mask,
which I what I will be using for my project, that quality is lost. A gas mask
replaces the identity with a vacancy. Gillian knows her subjects and knows who
she is becoming, but I won’t. As the mask I have chosen is one without an
identity. I’m replacing the familiarity with the unfamiliar and creating an
identity of my own, which won’t be as obvious.
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