Gillian Wearing

The New Art Gallery Walsall is delighted to present a new single-screen video work by British artist Gillian Wearing.

Wearing is known for her films and photographs, which explore our public personas and private lives. We Are Here sees the artist return to the area in and around Sandwell where she grew up and features people from the West Midlands region speaking various monologues as if from the grave. The concept for We Are Here is taken from American poet Edgar Lee Masters’ book Spoon River Anthology (1915), where residents rise up from the grave to talk about their lives, losses, regrets and memories of Spoon River, a fictional small town named after the real Spoon River that ran close to the poet’s home town.