This monograph provides an overview of the work of Gillian Wearing, one of the UK’s most significant Conceptual artists, from the iconic Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say (1992–93) – a series of photographic portraits of people holding up signs with written personal confessions or thoughts – to her 2010 video Bully, in which the roles of victims and perpetrators, actors and directors, are blurred.


Also included are new photographic works, two portraits from her ongoing series of iconic photographers, and still lifes of flowers that are inspired by the rich symbolism of seventeenth-century Dutch painting.


The publication accompanied a major international survey of the artist’s work at Whitechapel Gallery, London; K20 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; and Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, in 2012–13. It features 100 full-colour illustrations and never-before-published archival material, accompanied by new texts by the exhibition’s curators Daniel F. Herrmann, Doris Krystof and Bernhart Schwenk.