Dancing in Peckham

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

Gillian Wearing's video "Dancing in Peckham" shows the artist dancing in the middle of a south-London shopping centre. Members of the public walk past, bemused by her behaviour or ignoring her completely, as she moves to the music of Nirvana and Gloria Gaynor, played only in her head. Wearing is interested in the boundaries of what might be considered "normal" behaviour and the lines between private and public. The idea for "Dancing in Peckham" came to Wearing when she saw a woman dancing wildly at the Royal Festival Hall in London, unaware that other people were mocking her.

Born in Birmingham in 1963, Gillian Wearing studied at Chelsea School of Art and Design before attending Goldsmiths College where she was associated with the ‘Young British Artists’ or ‘YBA’ generation. Since then, Wearing has gained international recognition, winning the Turner Prize in 1997. A major retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery in 2012 later toured to Düsseldorf and Munich in 2013. In 2017, the National Portrait Gallery held the exhibition ‘Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun: Behind the Mask’ that explored shared issues of identity and gender. Wearing’s sculpture of Millicent Fawcett was unveiled in Parliament Square, London, in 2018 to mark the centenary of the Representation of the People Act of 1918.

Places

England, London, Peckham

Subjects

dance, topography, conceptual art, woman, shopping, shop-front

Materials & Techniques

video, betacam videotape, analogue master

Artist

Gillian Wearing (1963 - )

Title

Dancing in Peckham

Edition

One of an edition of 10.

Date

1994

Medium

master Betacam SP videotape

Acquisition

Purchased from Maureen Paley / Interim Art, November 1997

GAC number

17286/1