To celebrate a decade of HADES, we are thrilled to unveil a series of photographs by artist Gillian Wearing, showcasing the Best of HADES collection.
Wearing is a Turner Prize-winning artist renowned for her photography, video and conceptual works exploring identity. She often uses masks and self-portraiture to challenge perceptions of self and society. Born in Birmingham, she moved to London in the early 1980s.
'I grew up in 1970s Birmingham and was a punk then new romantic, and back then, what you wore was who you were. Punk especially was about wearing your identity as a statement, literally, in slogans, in badges. HADES taps into that same instinct.
What sets them apart, though, is that they've paired that attitude with genuine craftsmanship and heavyweight fabrics that actually last. HADES gives you the rebellion without the compromise, clothes that still say something, but are built to say it for years.' – Gillian Wearing.We have a deep admiration for Wearing's art and are so delighted that pieces from HADES archive have been interpreted through Wearing's masks and photographs. We are fascinated by what they reveal and hope you are too.
To mark the collaboration, we spoke with the Turner Prize-winning artist about her practice, the project and the ideas behind the images.
In your work with masks, you explore the tension between the self we present publicly, the
self we experience internally, and the roles society expects us to perform. We often read people symbolically. Do you think it is ever possible to escape those projections, or are they an unavoidable condition of identity itself?
We wouldn’t know what a self was without someone else. How we interact with that person or persons is how we shape ourselves, and vice versa. Identity is a co-production, we perform how we think that person should see us and they the same, we absorb traits, feelings and thoughts from those around us. There is no pre-social self, you can’t escape anywhere and it is intrinsic to humans. Wearing a mask can give you a little escape, freedom from being seen for how you look. Not judged on what you think people might see or how you see yourself.
HADES often describes clothing as a form of communication - whether intentional or not. Dress is one of the first ways we are read by others, long before we speak. In that sense, is fashion itself a kind of mask? Does it reveal who we are, or does it construct and obscure us through the identities we choose or feel compelled to project?
I met one of my best friends at school in the 70s purely because of her shoes, she had the highest platforms I'd ever seen and I decided on the spot I needed to know her. And we ended up genuinely close, for years. It was a way of finding someone in a situation where everyone is flattened by conformity at school. You sit in the same lessons as everyone else, are taught the same subjects off the same syllabus, then wear the same uniform so you look like everyone else too. Clothes were the first way I found of finding a route to the self. So it makes sense that I went on to become a punk, then a New Romantic. But I never thought of it as a mask. It was more like another layer of me.
You are from Birmingham, as are we, which feels worth noting precisely because the city is not often mentioned in narratives around art or fashion; To what extent did growing up there influence how you make and think? And if it did, to what extent does it still influence you?
That's where I spent my youth, so it was bound to shape me, though I couldn't really tell you how exactly. What I remember of growing up in the 70s Birmingham was how financially difficult it was for so many people, money was tight, jobs were hard to come by, industries were closing down.
I got a job at 16 as an accounts clerk/bookkeeper on a YOPS scheme, and then spent my nights in clubs like the Rum Runner, where Duran Duran hung around, and me and my friend Michele would get the bus home with George O'Dowd (Boy George) and Martin Degville from Sigue Sigue Sputnik. That was how I got to see and witness creativity by other young people.
But unlike the music scene, Birmingham didn’t have the scaffolding for visual art or fashion, I moved to London at 19 primarily to get a job, I got one very quickly as an accounts office junior. But it was being in London that opened creative possibilities for me, I eventually worked for a little animation company and whilst seeing the studio work of the animators I asked to be trained, I was told I needed an art education, and that’s how I got into art. But it helped that creativity was all around and quite normal. I do think the internet has made it easier for people to work wherever they like, social media provides visibility but that wasn’t possible all those years ago.
Sculpture is a significant part of your practice, through works such as A Real Birmingham Family (2014) and Millicent Fawcett (2018), you have reshaped who is recognised and celebrated in public space. Do you have a philosophy on sculpture? Should it comfort, challenge, or disrupt? Or is it just about making the best representation possible?
I have always been fascinated by bronze statues, and who gets to be chosen to be immortalised. So when I started with the family projects I wanted real people who represented the community. There were 3 different statues in all, the first one was in Trento in Italy, then Birmingham, then a Real Danish family in Copenhagen. I thought it would be interesting to document a real family. Not perfect or ideal but real.
