Gillian Wearing b. 1963
Confess All On Video. Don't Worry, you Will Be In Disguise. Intrigued? Call Gillian... (1994)
Duration 4'40"

Responding to an advertisement in Time Out magazine, a series of participants took up Wearing's offer to make their confessions on camera. This work was inspired by 'fly-on-the-wall' documentaries and confessional TV chat shows, but it also evokes the religious ritual of confession and its modern secular equivalent, psychoanalysis. Wearing raises questions about the motives behind confession. Disguised, her participants are free to tell the truth about things to which they would never admit in daily life. At the same time, they can invent flamboyant lies without being caught out.