Gillian Wearing Lockdown exhibition view: Maureen Paley, London, 2020 © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London / Hove

Lockdown: a word that’s more familiar to most of us now than it was this time last year, and one that’s laden with personal and collective meaning. Taking the word as both title and subject, Gillian Wearing’s latest show at Maureen Paley, London is at once a deeply personal revelation of the artist’s creative response, and a wider, more complex meditation on self and the time in which we now live.

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The artworks – a series of new self-portraits, a wax sculpture (Mask, Masked), and a video work (Your Views, 2013 – present) – are displayed in two rooms between which visitors’ movements are choreographed by notices on the walls prescribing physical distancing.

Lockdown Portrait 3, 2020 by Gillian Wearing, framed watercolour on paper, 39.5 x 31.5 x 2.6 cm © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London / Hove

Lockdown Portrait 5, 2020 by Gillian Wearing, framed watercolour on paper, 39.5 x 31.5 x 2.6 cm © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London / Hove

Wearing’s self-portraits, made in watercolour, are a product of the prolonged, enforced isolation brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. A departure from the photography and videography she is famous for, these small-scale paintings bespeak the self-reflection, both literally and figuratively, which Wearing’s lockdown precipitated. ‘Having represented myself in photography both as myself and as others,’ Wearing writes, ‘I wanted to see how paint and even the manner of painting could change my appearance.’

Untitled (lockdown portrait), 2020 by Gillian Wearing, oil on board 30.5 x 40.5 cm © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London / Hove

It might be a new medium but the paintings bear all the marks of the artist’s best-known work: the tensions between public and private, between our inner and outer selves. Think ‘Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say’ (1992-93): the police officer whose card reads ‘HELP’. Here, it is Wearing’s own quizzical eyes staring over the viewer’s shoulder, lost in thought, her hair tied up or loose, torso loosely sketched. How do we construct our identities, these pictures ask, how do we perform them?

Read more: British artist Hugo Wilson on creating art from chaos

Mask Masked, 2020 by Gillian Wearing, fabric mask, wax sculpture, steel rod and wooden plinth, 56 x 14 x 10 cm © Gillian Wearing, courtesy Maureen Paley, London / Hove

Mask, Masked underlines this question in fleshy three-dimensions. A severed hand reaches skyward, holding a life-like mask of Wearing’s face, eyes removed to reveal the wall behind. Over the mouth and nose is a second mask, reminiscent of the now ubiquitous face coverings worn in public spaces. An impossible masquerade ball attendee, the uncanny sculpture makes manifest the layers of concealment, of fiction, at play in person-to-person interactions, another layer added by the culture of the pandemic.

In a second room, Your Views, Wearing’s open-submission video work, brings together short clips of contributors’ ‘views’ from homes throughout the world, revealed when curtains or blinds are drawn back. Using footage taken during lockdown, including the ‘clap for carers’ celebrations, Your Views is a collage of lived experience. Rather than examine a face, this time the viewer tries on others’ masks, looks out onto the unfolding world. You might not see yourself in Wearing’s lockdown, her artistic response to its solitude, but the artist demonstrates your response has been creative too: your views are here, you are not alone.

‘Lockdown’ by Gillian Wearing runs until 25 October 2020. The exhibition is open by appointment. For more information visit: maureenpaley.com

Tom Cornelius

3D lenticular print of a slipper orchid from the 2016 series ‘Naturalium’ by Rob Munday, launched at Photo London 2017

How would you like your children’s portrait done – in oils, large-format photography,or 3D hologram? LUX Editor-at-Large Gauhar Kapparova meets Tamara Beckwith, the London society art dealer who represents Rob Munday, holographic artist extraordinaire

Artist Rob Munday

If, as a creator of portraits for global high society, you had to choose two subjects to star in your portfolio, you couldn’t do much better than Karl Lagerfeld and the Queen Elizabeth II.

And that is precisely who is on show, in 3D, downstairs at Tamara Beckwith’s chic The Little Black Gallery in west London. Beckwith, who has transformed from It Girl to charity supremo and art dealer over the past decade, represents Rob Munday, the near-legendary holograph and graphic artist.

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Munday was commissioned by Chanel and AnOther Magazine to create a portrait for a limited-run holographic cover for its 15th anniversary issue. And before that, he had worked with graphic designer-artist Chris Levine to create an official holographic portrait of the Queen.

Other subjects have included Angelina Jolie, musicians Noel and Liam Gallagher, sports presenter and former England football star Gary Lineker, and children’s author Michael Morpurgo.

A portrait of fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld by Rob Munday, commissioned for the 15th anniversary issue of AnOther Magazine in 2016 and used for a 3D lenticular image

Now you can have Munday create a holo-portrait of you, your children or anyone else in your life – although not pets. “We are now doing private commissions,” says Beckwith, “and we are getting lots of interest from my friends who are men who have beautiful wives and children.”

 Read next: President of Pace Gallery Marc Glimcher on making art for all

Beckwith is herself a collector of photography. She says she started collecting the likes of Terry O’Neill, Robert Doisneau and Horst P. Horst when she was young and adds that she was taken by Munday’s work because it was portraiture. “I don’t like anything abstract, it leaves me cold. Even if I go around a beautiful exhibition and someone is explaining to me how clever the artist was and how he was the first person to paint something like this, I’m like, really?”

Munday’s 2017 portrait (made with Willy Camden) of actress Angelina Jolie has been used in a Guerlain fragrance campaign

As well as her evident passion for portraiture, Beckwith will also bring her formidable contact book to bear on the project. Munday will not be producing many private commissions –they will be for just the right people. Beckwith, who also runs a society charity event every year in aid of the Gynaecological Cancer Fund, knows exactly who they are.

Rob Munday is represented by The Little Black Gallery, thelittleblackgallery.com