Turner Prize-winning artist Gillian Wearing is best known for her photographic and video works exploring the projection and protection of individual identity both in herself and others. During lockdown, she has been painting self-portraits and using the isolating time as a means for self-reflection and questioning of the human condition in unprecedented times. 

Wearing has an ongoing fascination with masks as a form of concealment and disguise, and has used them throughout her practice, often wearing them in self-portraits to transform her appearance. In this delicate watercolour painting made during the global lockdown period, the artist appears downhearted and vulnerable with her mask hanging by her side. Unlike many previous photographic self-portraits where Wearing meets the viewer’s gaze. Here she is pictured in profile, whereas the mask that she holds faces ominously behind her.   

Wearing has exhibited widely internationally and her work is held in numerous notable public collections. In 1997 (the same year that she won the Turner Prize) her work was included in the now notorious exhibition Sensation at the Royal Academy of Arts. In 2012, a major retrospective of her work was held at Whitechapel Gallery, London. She has also been commissioned to create major public sculptures including her statue of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett which was unveiled in 2018 and is the first statue of a woman in London’s Parliament Square made by a female artist.  Wearing was elected a Royal Academician in 2007 and was appointed an OBE in 2011. She lives and works in London.