Gillian Wearing's Self Made

The Stanislavski method originated in the early 1900s, but found fame in 1980 when Robert De Niro piled on the pounds to play the emotionally bruised prizefighter Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull. The method quickly became shorthand for an actor prepared to immerse themselves wholly in a character and it didn't rake long before The Press began reporting in lurid detail the extreme measures taken by Hollywood stars in their desperate attempt to represent reality on film. As a result, the Stanislavski method became something of an in joke.

Actor Sam Rumbelow believes Stanislavski has been misrepresented. As a trained teacher in the method, he features in Gillian Wearing's new art work, a documentary called Self Made about a group of people who answer an ad inviting them to appear in a film either as themselves or as a character of their own choosing. The film starts with a truly horrifying incident acted out by one of the participants after undergoing an intensive series of workshops with Rumbelow. It sets the scene for what becomes an uneasy dialog about authenticity.

This is not new territory for Wearing. The ex Turner Prize winner has spent her career fascinated by artifice. She is perhaps best known for a photographic series in which she invited members of the public to write down what they were feeling on a card. But here we having something much more penetrating than her usual study of the masks people wear. Through Rumbelow's training the eight volunteers start to reveal deeply personal information about themselves which then infiltrates into the characters they play on film. Some of the admissions are shocking, yet they are imparted in a matter-of-fact way. A factory worker plans to kill himself when he reaches the age of 55. Is it true? Wearing leaves that up to us, revealing just how brilliantly opaque the truth can be.

Gillian Wearing's film Self Made is released on September 2 2011.

Text by Jessica Lack