GILLIAN WEARING | SICKERT’S SISTER
Gillian Wearing, Helena Swanwick: feminist, pacifist and Walter Sickert’s sister, 2022, framed watercolour on paper, 40.6 × 32.6 cm © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, LondonGillian Wearing is, of course, best known for her conceptual videos and photographs and, more recently, her sculptures. But during lockdown the Turner Prize-winning artist also turned – like other YBAs before her – to painting. And, in particular, to painting portraits.
A series of rather enigmatic, rather haunting self-portraits, in watercolour and oils, was displayed in Maureen Paley’s London gallery in September 2020 (and gained a five-star review from Jonathan Jones in the Guardian).
Wearing has since turned her hand to painting portraits of other subjects, too, who, according to Paley, ‘appear in the lexicon of what she has made’ (ie relate to her previous works). Two of these pieces are displayed in the latest show at Paley’s Hove gallery, Morena di Luna, outer view, inner world.
The painting we have featured here is entitled Helena Swanwick: feminist, pacifist and Walter Sickert’s sister. Maureen Paley was at hand during the show’s private view to explain the story behind it. Wearing, she told us, first became aware of Swanwick when she was researching the life and times of Millicent Fawcett, while preparing the statue of that pioneering feminist which now stands in Parliament Square. On the base of that statue, Wearing has placed photographs of 53 other supporters of the suffragist cause, including the image of Swanwick on which the watercolour portrait was based.
There’s another twist to the tale. “It so happens Walter Sickert has painted this very building” she continued, referring to the seafront house in Adelaide Crescent, where Morena di Luna is based. “And it appears in a painting that was included in the [recent Sickert] show at Tate Britain. We were aware of that – so many people sent us pictures! – so I thought to have this work inside this house, that he painted from the outside, seemed to be a nice circle.”
The Morena di Luna exhibition is a group show in which a selection of 17 artists Paley represents riff on the medium of portraiture. These include two other Turner Prize winners (Wolfgang Tillmans and Lubaina Himid), Kaye Donachie, Paul P, Donald Urquhart and Issy Wood. The other Wearing portrait in the show is Volodymyr Zelenskyy, one year on, 2022. The show opens weekends only, until June 18.