Introduction to confessional art

I've recently been delving into many new areas of art that are completely new to me.  Confessions are something that I have always been aware of, but I have never seen them as a form of art.  A few days ago I was introduced to two artists who I had heard of, but never been aware of their artwork.  Gillian Wearing and Tracey Emin are two artists who have worked closely with confessions in their artwork.  First of all I shown some of Gillian Wearing artwork called 'Signs That Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say'.  For me the title of the work says exactly what it needs to say, write something on a piece of card that you want to say!  From looking at the photography, and what the people have got to say, it is clear to see that people are saying something that they can’t perhaps say to somebody else, and are confessing on camera.  One 'Sign' that stood out to me was an image of a man dressed in a black suit, who was in fact a banker.  The man held a sign saying 'I'm desperate'.  When I first saw the sign I presumed that the man was desperate for love, but each time I look at the image I think of something else.  For example, desperate... for a new job, to lose weight, or even for the toilet.  I feel that Gillian Wearing challenges the audience to try and guess what exactly the sign is all about, and also gets the audience to question themselves to why they have said that. 

Gillian Wearing 

"A great deal of my work is about questioning handed-down truths"



'I'm Desperate' 1992-93



Tracey Emin, another artist who I have been introduced to in the past few days.  The first piece of her work that I was shown is called 'Everyone I have ever slept with'.  This piece of art is a tent with several names all stitched in, the names of people who she was slept with.  As part of an audience myself, seeing this for the first time, the first thing that I thought when saw this was 'who would be stitched into my tent?' I also thought does it have a sexual reference to it, because when I first saw it that was exactly what I presumed it to be, but from looking further into the piece of art I understood that not every name had a sexual reference to it, some are family and friends.  I think what helped me understand that is the fact that the tent is quite colour and 'child-like', I then realised that the year1963 was when we was born.



'Everyone who I have slept with' 1963-1995


From exploring confessional art I have realised one main theme.  Confessional art is all about challenging the audience and putting them in the shoes of the artist to make them think what the art is actually about.  After looking at several pieces of confessional artwork I feel as if I can produce a piece of work that can reflect the big name artists by challenging my audience.