These two new films by Turner Prize winner Gillian Wearing were screened as part of an installation inside an apartment in Birmingham’s city centre. Inspired by her long-standing interest in the seminal BBC series The Family, the first reality TV show, Wearing reflects on her own childhood as well as the representation of Heather Wilkins, the outspoken teenager who appeared in the programme.

In the style of celebrity television, chat-show host Trisha Goddard leads an interview with Wilkins, looking back at the show and reflecting on her life since it was made, interspersed with sequences from The Family. In the next room, a film projection showed scenes of typical domestic life from the 1970s. In a series of shots, a young Wearing lookalike watches television, dressed in Seventies clothes and surrounded by nostalgic paraphernalia. Barely lifting her gaze she turns only occasionally to face the camera to make observations.

Wearing’s return to The Family involved a complex process of retelling, recreation and reconstruction. Combining powerful and provocative insights with intimate documentary making, this was the artist’s most ambitious project to date.

Family History was commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Artists in the City, Reading Borough Council and was funded by Arts Council England and Film London Artists’ Moving Image Network with kind support from Midlands and City Developments.