While her former classmate at Goldsmiths College has his retrospective at the Tate (that other Young British Artist, he of the pickled shark), Gillian Wearing has hers at Whitechapel Gallery, also in London. Twenty years of photographs and films – portraits in motion – including the film “Secrets and Lies” (2009) where she has people reveal outlandish secrets while wearing latex masks to disguise their identities. She’s into confessions, and is desperate to capture or recreate and then, of course, expose people’s “real” emotions while they stare into her lens.
Art critics suggest her work is meant to muddle the difference between fact and fiction. None of it is “true”. It’s art interfering with reality.