Grayson Perry (1960 – )
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Untitled 2015 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P8628
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Untitled 2015 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P8623
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Untitled 2015 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P8624
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Untitled 2015 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P8627
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THE EXPULSION FROM NUMBER 8 EDEN CLOSE 2012 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P8399 © The Artist Gift of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery with the support of Channel 4 Television, the Art Fund and Sfumato Foundation, with additional support from AlixPartners.
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THE AGONY IN THE CAR PARK 2012 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P8398 © The Artist Gift of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery with the support of Channel 4 Television, the Art Fund and Sfumato Foundation, with additional support from AlixPartners.
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Untitled 2015 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P8626
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THE UPPER CLASS AT BAY 2012 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P8401 © The Artist Gift of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery with the support of Channel 4 Television, the Art Fund and Sfumato Foundation, with additional support from AlixPartners.
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VILLAGE OF PENIANS 2001 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P7486 © Courtesy The Artist and Victoria Miro, London Grayson Perry
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THE ANNUNCIATION OF THE VIRGIN DEAL 2012 Grayson Perry (1960 – ) P8400 © The Artist Gift of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery with the support of Channel 4 Television, the Art Fund and Sfumato Foundation, with additional support from AlixPartners.
Grayson Perry was born in Chelmsford, England in 1960. He studied at Braintree College of Further Education and later at Portsmouth Polytechnic. In 2003, he won the Turner Prize and in 2013 was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s birthday honours list.
Though working within the context of contemporary art, Perry is a practitioner of artisanal crafts, specifically pottery. He rejects Conceptual art as the sole claimant of ‘ideas’ and champions the decorative and intimate qualities of handmade objects with stories to tell. His ceramic pots are highly illustrated with narrative scenes, often darkly humorous, and in their traditional look, they challenge what the artist feels to be the uninspiring quality of ‘good taste’.
In the ceramic pot, Village of the Penians (2001) Perry explores symbolism and religion within a fantasy world where the phallus is an icon of worship for the community. The large, earthenware pot is decorated with hand drawn scenes of village life in which male genitalia appears wherever we might expect to see a crucifix. Overlaying the drawings are images torn from vintage children’s books, creating a jumble of historic references and a confusion of past and present.
Perry has curated major exhibitions, such as ‘The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman’ at the British Museum, London (2011), where he interspersed ancient artefacts with his own works in order to explore folk history and craft tradition. In 2013 he unveiled a major work titled ‘The Vanity of Small Differences’, a series of six large-scale tapestries which follow the ‘Rake’s Progress’ narrative through scenes from contemporary British life.
Glossary
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Contemporary
Existing or coming into being at the same period; of today or of the present. The term that designates art being made today.
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Craft
The creation of handmade objects intended to be both useful and decorative.
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Earthenware
One of the three major types of pottery, the others being stoneware and porcelain. It is opaque, soft and porous unless covered completely with glaze. The firing temperatures can be low - 800ºC or high - 1200ºC, when it starts to vitrify, becoming stoneware.