Born: Birmingham, 1963

Gillian Wearing's work depends on collaboration or collusion with others. Adopting an apparently documentary approach, her videos and photographs concentrate on the points of friction between public and private realms, between individual impulses and established norms. Often they dwell on relationships between families, lovers and friends, with results that are variously humorous, poignant and problematic for the viewer.

Wearing has spoken of being drawn to people who stand outside normal social boundaries, and of her own feelings of alienation. Prelude features a y oung female street drinker with whom she became acquainted. Wearing began to make a film about her, but before it could be completed the woman died. Shocked by the woman's death - which as that of a street drinker went by uninvestigated - for a time Wearing abandoned the project. In Prelude she brings together fragments of this woman's story, paying tribute to the troubled life of a particular individual.