Homage-Gillian Wearing

Gillian Wearing (born 1963) is an English conceptual artist. The body of work of hers I have look at is called Signs that Say What You Want Them to Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You to Say (1992-93), in which random members of public hold up messages written on sheets of A3 paper. The most famous image of the lot is a man in a suit and tie with “I’m desperate” written on his sheet.

Gillian Wearing-I'm Desperate

Although an interesting series in the sense you can delve into peoples personalities through what they have written on the paper, this series has no real photographic talent behind it, all the images are a mishmash of random scenes. So to pay homage to this image I decided to throw an ironic humorous spin on her images. 

My Homage Image

For my homage image I decided to be funny and take an image of a coconut monkey, I purposefully used a landscape format to take this image to show I am going against Wearing in a way, and breaking away from her norms. Perhaps this image is like my sign and is an insight into my mind just as the writing was for the people. In the end after showing people and seeing them laugh I decided to use this image and I am happy with it.