Sharon Lockhart - Lunch Break Installation

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. Right now, you are looking at not one, but two, works of art by two different artists made 13 years apart from each other.

The first work of art is by Duane Hanson, a sculptor who made the lifelike sculpture called Lunch Break in 1989. Would you believe me if I told you that the scaffolding and saw horses, the two workers in hard hats, and the one in a Fila shirt are actually sculptures? The two workers are made from plastic. Can you tell? It's tricky.

The two other figures in the picture are actually alive. A hint: one of them has a blue shirt and likes pizza. These two living people are part of the second artwork you see here by the photographer, Sharon Lockhart, whose four pictures document workers at a Scottish museum putting up Duane's sculpture in the galleries in 2002.

Sharon has done a very good job at taking these pictures from different angles so it appears as if all of the figures, alive or not, are moving around, but in fact, just two are changing their positions. Do these photographs show art or life? Well, both. They show us that art and life are not always so easy to tell apart.