Gillian Wearing, at Whitechapel Gallery, Seven magazine review The tales we tell the world about ourselves, Wearing suggests, are as artificial as the faces we wear for it: behind the painted smile, we're an ineffable mass of secrets, sadness and insecurity. Similar works followed - 2000"s Trauma and 2009"s Secrets & Lies - and in a neat piece of curating, all three videos are shown here in their own private booth, evoking the context of a church confessional. The viewer takes on the role of priest, granting absolution to our anonymous penitents merely by hearing their stories out. Video confessions also recall the Big Brother diary room, and in making protagonists of real people, Wearing is often cited as heralding the docu-soaps, reality programmes and tabloid talk-shows that clog up our television screens today. Yet, her work is much more truthful, precisely and paradoxically because of the masks - which rule out all exhibitionism and fame-hunting phoniness. 10 to 16 covers similar ground, a video in which children share their hopes ("I imagine I'm a professional footballer") and fears ("At 10, I suffered chronic acne... I've never wanted anyone to look at me"). The twist is that the young voices are mouthed by adult actors: a non-footballing slouch lying on the sofa and a grey man in a grey suit, whom few people would indeed ever look at. The implication? That beneath the veneer of adulthood lurk unrealised childhood dreams and persistent childhood demons. Wearing's most famous work is 1992-3"s Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say. Stopping random people in the street, she asked them to write down their feelings and hold up the sheet of A3 card on which they did so. Seventy of the 600 resulting photos are on show, and though some are rather clichéd - the hippy calling for "more love," say - many more are intriguing. A sleekly successful banker declares "I'm desperate"; while a shy septuagenarian shows he still feels the groinal urges of old, observing "What a lovely girl." Again, appearances prove deceptive, and it takes Wearing's intervention to reveal what people really think and feel. All the world's a stage, and we humans are the masked Athenian players on it. After cutting a swathe through traditional British restraint and uptightness, Wearing has in recent years taken a more introspective turn. Inspired by old photos of her family, her heroes (Diane Arbus, Claude Cahun) and her own younger self, she has set about recreating them through impersonation, donning wigs, costumes and sculptural masks. Wearing seems to be questioning here our very identity - are we nothing more than a combination of our past, our parents and our dreams? When Lucian Freud died last year, art's pessimists lamented that nobody left alive could paint a portrait even half as good. Fair point. Yet, in her own postmodern way, hasn't Wearing proved herself every bit as penetrative? Whitechapel Gallery, to Jun 17, www.whitechapelgallery.org