In 2014 Outset England in association with the Art Fund supported the production of We Are Here, a new single-screen video work by Turner Prize-winning artist Gillian Wearing.
We Are Here is an intensely personal film exploring the West Midlands, where Wearing grew up. The film sees Wearing returning to her childhood home of Sandwell and features monologues spoken by individuals living there. We Are Here was inspired by the American poet Edgar Lee Masters’ book Spoon River Anthology (1915). In this book people having lived in the fictional town Spoon River rise up from the grave and talk about their lives, regrets, losses and memories.
We Are Here received its UK premiere in Gillian Wearing’s solo exhibition at The New Art Gallery Walsall from 18th July to 12th October 2014. Until 24th November it was on display at Maureen Paley, London. It then was shown at Regen Projects in Los Angeles from 12th December 2014 to January 2015.
Gillian Wearing is an English photographer and video artist, born in Birmingham in 1963. Her work explores the disparities between public and private life, between individual and collective experience - a practice which the artist herself has described as ‘editing life'. She lives and works in London. Wearing has shown extensively in the UK and across the world. In 2007 the artist was made a Royal Academician and in 2011 she was honoured with an OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to the Arts. Wearing won the Turner Prize in 1997.
Recent solo exhibitions include Whitechapel Gallery, London, toured to K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Duesseldorf, Pinakothek der Moderne and Museum Brandhorst, Munich, 2012; A Real Birmingham Family, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2011; Confessions: Portraits, vidéos, Musée Rodin, Paris, 2009; Living Proof, ACCA, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne, 2006.
