After Gillian Wearing

Our photography experiment was inspired by Gillian Wearing, and took place outside of a classroom, enabling us to approach a variety of people, where it was the member of the public’s story or expression that was captured. We simply the question “What were you thinking?” and presented the questioned with a blank page and marker pen. While most responses consisted largely of, “I’m cold!” or “I’m freezing!” some of the responses were thoughtful and it was these that made the approach worthwhile.

However, even the brief encounters gave us a lot of information about a person; whether they were shy or confident, how they spoke and what was important to them in life at the moment. My favourite response was that of a man who took a long time to pen the words: “Just going to call my girl to say ‘I love you’”. He, like many others, seemed to find the project really interesting – at one point all the people on the bus were staring at us while we were talking to a mother and child. I suppose while it wasn’t such a normal thing to see on the street, it was the only place to get some real responses and interact with people.

I really enjoyed this project, as it not only provoked some interesting responses in an artistic sense, but helped build confidence personally.

Gillian Wearing

In the past we had all done a live art piece based on Gillian Wearing, however the one we had done was restricted to certain questions. This time around it was open and the participants were free to write anything that they wanted whether from how they were feeling that day to what their reactions were to the live art piece; one man asked us was this really art.

At first I was a bit unsure if anyone would participate because I know how I am when I am approached by salesmen but all the questions that we were unsure of, wouldn’t be answered until we went out their and did it, and surprisingly enough people participated. Once in our first spot we scanned the people to see who we would think take part, already we a having expectations of whether a person is going to do it and what they may say. As a group we tried different approaches, somewhere straight to the point and others more detailed. One that often worked was firstly saying ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello sorry to disturb you, but…’ once we had their attention we then went on to ask if they would take part in out live art piece, it will only take a minute. In some cases we had to write for them as they were in a rush for the bus or to go on with their day bringing live art and it’s meaning together. The more people we asked the more easier it became, the sites were also important we had a lot by the bus stop and by Tesco Metro however I feel it would work a lot better in central London. Overall I really enjoyed the experience and I would look at different ways of approaching people to possibly gain more responses.