grayson perry tour review

The Big Review: Grayson Perry: Smash Hits at National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh ★★★★☆

The hugely popular english artist has, in this retrospective, set out his case as a chronicler of the british psyche.

Smash Hits spans Grayson Perry’s career covering subjects such as class and Britishness and features more than 80 works, including the ceramic piece The Grayson Perry Trophy Awarded to a Person with Good Taste (around 1992) Nick Mailer photography

When it comes to living British artists with popular appeal, they do not get much bigger than Grayson Perry. Crowds are currently booking by timed slot for his retrospective at the National Galleries of Scotland (Royal Scottish Academy) in Edinburgh. The top ticket price of £19—perhaps a record in Scotland—is deterring no one. This critic, turning up first thing on a Sunday morning, hoping for a bit of peace and quiet, was disappointed.

Not disappointed by the show, however, which looks great. The spacious Georgian rooms, designed by William Henry Playfair in the 1820s, are at their best with big works in them and accommodate well a mixture of wall-based and free-standing pieces. Perry’s ceramics, sculptures, prints and large-scale tapestries could have been made for this space.

By coincidence, one of this summer’s other most popular exhibitions has also taken place north of the border: in Glasgow, visitors queued to see the Banksy survey Cut and Run at the city’s Gallery of Modern Art. The show was open until 11pm nightly, and till 5am at weekends, to accommodate different types of crowd.

Interestingly, the two exhibitions chose similar approaches. The commentary for each was created by the artist in a direct, confiding tone. In different ways, both artists prioritise commenting on the contemporary world in their work and have a subversive energy, although they have now, to varying degrees, been embraced by the mainstream.

One key difference is that Perry’s core subject is himself. It is hard to imagine Perry’s work without Grayson Perry—transvestite, TV personality, now Sir Grayson and self-proclaimed National Treasure (apparently, National Galleries of Scotland advised against this as a title for the show—after all, which nation?). He has worked closely with the curators Patrick Elliott and Tor Scott, and the interpretation, both in the exhibition and its catalogue, is in his voice. This show is determinedly not about art-historical evaluation. It is an artist telling his story of his work.

In the first room, which sets out the exhibition’s guiding principles, Perry’s presence is unignorable. The back wall is occupied by Reclining Artist (2017), a woodcut self-portrait of an androgynous, nude Perry in his studio, nearly three metres long. Next to that is the 2013 etching A Map of Days , which he describes as a “self-portrait as a walled town”. The making of maps, mind maps and self-portraits of different kinds runs throughout the show.

In fact, the largest work here, The Walthamstow Tapestry (2009), which is a gargantuan 15m long, is a kind of self-portrait. Inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry and the Seven Ages of Man, it charts a journey from birth to death through consumer brands. The design references William Morris (born in Walthamstow) but is ambitious and inventive, a kind of medieval-modern. Perry has a magpie mind and references widely, but always owns his influences up front.

The decision to start working in tapestry after his Turner Prize win in 2003 was a key shift in Perry’s practice. Working in ceramics has practical limitations of scale, based on the size of a kiln. In tapestry— designed in Photoshop, digitally woven—he could make work as big as he wanted. It changed the way his exhibitions looked and hooked him in to a narrative form that suited what he wanted to do.

His pots, however, remain central to the practice, increasingly sophisticated in technique as the years go on. They could be his best work, as they are more intimate, sardonic, spiky and subversive than the tapestries. In ceramics, he takes a pop at middle-class voyeurs and art world hypocrisy, provoking his audience (“Are you an art lover or a cock teaser?”) and his collectors. He once titled a show Super Rich Interior Decoration , and the irony was not lost on him when collectors bought it all the more.

Crafty culture crafting

In 2011, Perry curated an exhibition at the British Museum, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman , with 135 objects from the collection and 30 works of his own. The cast-iron galleon he made as the title work for that show occupies pride of place here. It is hung with glass containers filled with liquid, representing the blood, sweat and tears of the unnamed craftspeople who made the precious artefacts of our culture. It feels as though it is with them that he allies himself most.

The other pivotal moment was when he made his first television documentary, 2005’s Why Men Wear Frocks , for Channel 4. As he went on to make programmes on Britishness, masculinity and class, his art developed a symbiotic relationship with his television work. The art sparked the TV, but the documentary work also fed back into his practice, making it more outward-looking, able to embrace bigger ideas.

In both art and television, he has a gift for speaking the language of ordinary people, for nailing cultural mores. In a large tapestry called Comfort Blanket (2014), he lists the things associated with Britishness that people might find comforting, from the Queen and the NHS to the Magna Carta and having a nice cup of tea. This is not a profound idea with hidden depths, but it does observe carefully and articulate precisely what people feel they already know.

His tapestry series on class, The Vanity of Small Differences (2012)—inspired by William Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress (1732-34)—is strongest in its detail, laying bear the foibles of the middle-class: an Aga, mid-century Modern furniture, organic jam. In a similar way, he skewers the 1970s in his A House for Essex series: the moustache, the orange Ford Capri. These are stereotypes, but it is more than that. His audience recognises it all instinctively. People feel seen.

The last room is about Englishness. Giving a tour to the media before the show opened, Perry suggested that having the exhibition in Scotland gave him some welcome distance to examine the subject. Central, here, is the new tapestry Sacred Tribal Artefact (2023), which shows an ageing patriarchal lion handing over his tattered English flag to a young woman. He describes it as “a heraldic depiction of an ancient country in a time of change”.

It should come as no surprise that this show is popular. It is colourful, fast-moving, visually impressive and occupies this grand, formal space with panache. It is not a show of hidden depths—what you get is what you see. However, if a retrospective is an opportunity to weigh up an artistic career, Perry’s tips the scales decisively, at least for this moment in time. What happens in the next few decades might be a different story. These works speak so clearly and specifically to this moment; I suspect that, for future generations, they will not be timeless masterpieces but—like the works that Perry explored in the British Museum—will need some translation in years to come.

What the other critics said

Smash Hits has divided the UK’s art writers. In The Times, Waldemar Januszczak praised the exhibition, particularly its ceramics, saying the show proved “you don’t have to be pious to be serious or ponderous to be deep” . Duncan Macmillan gave the show a five-star review in The Scotsman, particularly praising how it used the space , and comparing it to the Eduardo Paolozzi retrospective in the same rooms 40 years ago.

But Jonathan Jones was scathing in The Guardian, saying the art “relentlessly avoids poetry or depth” and accusing Perry of “throwing away his talent on the vanity of small amusements” .

Meanwhile, Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph described Perry’s referencing as “a hodgepodge of homage and imitation” .

• Grayson Perry: Smash Hits , National Galleries Scotland (Royal Scottish Academy), until 12 November

• Curators: Patrick Elliott with Tor Scott

Review: Grayson Perry’s joyous, contemplative retrospective ‘Smash Hits’

Turner prize-winning artist Grayson Perry’s ‘Smash Hits’ retrospective at the National Galleries of Scotland (Royal Scottish Academy) is a colourful and provocative exhibition, diverse in media and subject matter. Chronicling a journey of self-understanding, identity-forming, and culture-observing, it navigates the line between the personal and the universal, with Perry endowing fictional characters and Gods with predicaments and traumas drawn from his own life experiences. Undeniably autobiographical, yet resonant with broader social issues, the show is simultaneously introspective while casting its gaze outward.

Gods and alter-egos

One of the most interesting aspects of this exhibition is the selection of fictional Gods, alter-egos, characters, and icons that Perry portrays with various issues, identities, and personas. The most prevalent is Perry’s childhood teddy bear, Alan Measles, who has been depicted almost countless times as a God.

In the first room of the exhibition, the viewer is confronted with a large red teddy bear on skyscraper stilts, wielding hand grenades and a gun. This tapestry, ‘Vote Alan Measles for God’, exemplifies the satirical tone of the exhibition: Perry takes the heavy starting points of Afghan war rugs and over-powerful politicians and twists them into a light-hearted, humorous, and aesthetically pleasing tapestry.

Our cultural and religious beliefs

In Alan’s casting as the Virgin Mary in ‘Alan Healing the Wound’, however, he becomes an icon we are almost expected to worship. The bronze cast of the teddy bear cradling a child is beautifully intricate and skilfully rendered, but also absurd in how convincing it is as a religious icon. Unlike the tapestry’s light-hearted mockery, this Alan icon feels eerily akin to actual religious objects. This perhaps asks the viewer to reflect on the fickle nature of human cultural and religious beliefs. In the exhibition’s caption for this piece, Perry admits that he elevated Alan Measles to a God-like icon because of his want for ready-to-go subject matter. This is one of the many moments in this exhibition where we are confronted head-on with the artist’s humanity; despite being so prolific and successful he still admits to the occasional block of inspiration.  

Photo 1 - Sir Grayson Perry. Sacred Tribal Artefact, 2023. Tapestry 200 x 350 cm78 3/4 x 137 3/4 in © Grayson Perry. Courtesy the artist, Paragon | Contemporary Editions Ltd and Victoria Miro; Photo 2 - Sir Grayson Perry.  Our Town, 2022. Etching109 x 161 cm42 ⅞ × 63 ⅜ in Edition of 68 plus 2 artist’s proofs © Grayson Perry. Courtesy the artist, Paragon | Contemporary Editions Ltd and Victoria Miro

Exploring class mobility through Tim Rakewell

Another character fated to live at the hands of Perry is Tim Rakewell. In one of the artist’s most well-known works, ‘The Vanity of Small Differences’, Tim is dragged through the trials of class mobility, working his way up the ranks until his overambition and foolish strive for commodity cause his downfall. The six tapestries are based on religious artworks from the Renaissance, a choice Perry made partially to give them a historical grounding, and partially, as he jokes in the exhibition’s audio guide, to mock the smugness middle-class viewers would feel upon recognising the Renaissance references.

The series takes over a room in the exhibition, immersing the viewer in Tim’s quasi-Renaissance rise and fall. The tapestries are in Perry’s signature colourful palette, peppered with cultural references. In them, Tim is placed in several character roles, the most poignant of them being Jesus Christ. In the first tapestry, baby Tim is held on his mother’s lap, reminiscent of the Virgin and Child, and he reaches for his mother’s phone. In the final tapestry, Tim lies dead in a gutter after crashing his car while speeding, held by a woman in a blue dress, mirroring Christ’s lamentation in Rogier van der Weyden’s work of the same name. At the bottom of the last tapestry is a smashed iPhone, replacing a memento mori skull. In making Tim Rakewell echo Christ, Perry establishes a universal order of events in the series of tapestries. Tim died at the hands of his greed, the work perhaps serving as a warning against overambition and hubris, while simultaneously mocking all stages of the English class system.

Grayson Perry Smash Hits. © Nick Mailer Photography

Modern Gods: ‘The Walthamstow Tapestry’

Also looking at commodity and greed is Perry’s largest work, ‘The Walthamstow Tapestry.’ This 15-metre by 3-metre tapestry tells the story of a life through brands. Each brand is given a persona of sorts, Perry treating them as ‘modern Gods’. Perry claims the personifications of the brands are nonsense, and many of them do feel absurd (McVities biscuits making offerings to the devil, for example), but some are strangely fitting. Pret a Manger, the yuppie sandwich paradise, is personified as a teenager on a skateboard; Birdseye, the frozen food brand that helps make a quick meal, becomes a mum pushing a pram; Dyson, the technology company, is shown as a woman riding a sleek mobility scooter. These Gods remind the viewer of the prevalence of brands in all stages of our life, while also perhaps being a morbid comment by Perry on the abandonment of actual gods in favour of commodities.

Grayson Perry God as a God himself 

In fact, perhaps the most prominent false God in this exhibition is Grayson Perry himself. Perry assumed a God-like role in prescribing fates and identities to these made-up characters and bringing inanimate brands and teddy bears to life. Perry has created his own fantastical world, full of historical references, vibrant colours, and a penchant for mocking anyone and everyone. ‘Smash Hits’ exemplifies the playfulness of Perry’s practice while also revealing his tendency to address childhood trauma, class qualms, and struggles with modernity by inflicting fictional gods, characters, and alter-egos with similar struggles. This emotional detachment from the work renders it much more universal, making for an exhibition that is both contemplative and joyous.

Grayson Perry ‘Smash Hits’ is currently on at the National Galleries of Scotland (Scottish Royal Academy) in Edinburgh and runs until November 12, 2023.

Eager to explore other exhibitions around the world? Check out Fotografiskas , a behind the scenes look at the grand opening of Berlin’s new Photography Museum.

Credits for the Main photo: © Grayson Perry Smash Hits. Photo by Nick Mailer Photography

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Grayson Perry: Smash Hits review

The biggest exhibition of the artist’s 40-year career has opened in Edinburgh

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Grayson Perry is arguably the most famous artist working in Britain today, said BBC Scotland . Since the 1980s, he has gone “from taking pottery evening classes to winning the Turner Prize”, and presenting programmes on Channel 4. He is now held in high esteem by both the art establishment and the general public, and this summer has seen the self-titled “Transvestite Potter” scale new heights. In June, he was knighted. Now, “the biggest exhibition of his 40-year career” has opened in Edinburgh.

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It is the first retrospective he has ever had in the UK, featuring more than 80 of his best-known works: pots, tapestries, prints and sculptures. Among the highlights is his “astonishing” 15-metre “Walthamstow Tapestry”, said Duncan Macmillan in The Scotsman . It’s an ironic epic, which tells the story of the seven ages of man, the journey from birth to death, “through the lens of shopping”. Perry’s work reflects on all sorts of “issues”: masculinity, class, Englishness. But it’s all done with a deft satirical touch and a “truly original vision”. The Royal Scottish Academy is hosting the show for its neighbour, the National Galleries of Scotland; I haven’t seen its halls “so well-filled by a single living artist” for many decades.

Perry is “a manifestly talented artist who can draw detailed, precise, complex images”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian . Sadly, he chooses to throw away this talent on “the vanity of small amusements”. Much here relates directly to his unhappy childhood in 1960s Essex, during which he created “a private universe” around a teddy bear called Alan Measles. Alan is a recurring figure here: we see him cast in bronze, cradling the artist’s “inner child”; posing as a knight; and being “transported in a glass carriage on the back of Perry’s motorbike”. If there’s any charm to this, it soon wears thin. It is all so “very English”, Perry’s whimsy, and his ironic deflation of anything that looks too serious. He has chosen to be “a middle-class entertainer”, a suburban pop artist. Ultimately, the “lack of passion and courage” here is “depressing”.

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For all its “intense intricacy”, Perry’s style of drawing is “distinctly adolescent”, said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph . He “abhors empty space”, and his art is an ambiguity-free “hodgepodge of homage and imitation”, in which he updates masterpieces such as Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress for contemporary audiences. His preferred aesthetic – “a sort of homespun, consciously clumsy finish” – seems mannered: “proficiency masquerading as ineptitude”. Yet he has one “superpower”: he is genuinely funny. Whether they are lampooning the art market or the puritanism of “social justice warriors”, his “filthy, puckish jugs, jars, vases, and urns” rarely fail to raise a laugh. This show demonstrates that while he may not be a great artist, he is unquestionably “a great satirist”.

National Galleries of Scotland (Royal Scottish Academy), Edinburgh (0131-624 6200). Until 12 November; nationalgalleries.org

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Grayson Perry on popularity, pottery and class: ‘I still enjoy looking for discomfort in the faces of the overeducated’

The turner prize-winning artist talks to mark hudson about why art shouldn’t feel like homework, why he used to have a ‘screwed up’ relationship with art dealers, and his new retrospective ‘smash hits’, article bookmarked.

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G rayson Perry has just hung the biggest exhibition of his career, and it’s brought on an epiphany. “I’ve come to realise I’m a very old-fashioned artist,” says the irrepressible Turner Prize-winning potter, relaxing in his London studio. His concerns, he tells me, were “do the colours go together, are the compositions working, is it a nice texture” – basically, “what looks good together”.  

That might seem a surprising pronouncement from someone who is widely regarded as having changed our perceptions of what an artist can be. Since coming virtually from nowhere to win the 2003 Turner Prize – notoriously wearing a dress to accept Britain’s biggest art award – Perry has been hyper-visible across an extraordinary range of platforms. He’s traversed Britain in TV series challenging our ideas about art and taste. He’s published books detailing his harrowing childhood and redemption through therapy. He’s done stand-up comedy, newspaper columns, and a new musical about his life, for which he’s written the lyrics. Oh, and back in June he was knighted by Prince William, with Perry again, of course, wearing a dress and full make-up. 

Yet it’s clear talking to him that – unlike, say, Andy Warhol or Tracey Emin – he doesn’t regard everything he does as art. “Those other activities are just me having a go at things. I take them on without any prior skill. I’ve learnt on the job with everything I’ve done, including pottery. And I really enjoy doing all these things, but I don’t consider them part of my visual art.” 

And those “other activities” haven’t prevented him from making the work to fill Edinburgh’s vast National Galleries of Scotland (Royal Scottish Academy) for his new career-spanning show. Wryly titled Smash Hits , the retrospective covers the full gamut of 40 years of his work, from the quirky pots that made his name to picture maps of British class and neon-frenetic tapestries inspired by Hogarth. “It’s just the most colourful exhibition,” he says with delight. That focus on how it looks – what looks good together – is clearly one he’s relished. It’s a consideration that he believes “a lot of artists today forget”.  

“There’s a lot of emphasis on  issues .” He says the word almost with distaste. “People forget that it’s got to look nice, that we go to galleries for fun. We go to galleries on our days off. We don’t go to get homework.”  

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Yet Perry has hardly harmed his career by dealing with issues, including identity, gender, class, taste and religion, to name just a few of those listed in his show’s catalogue.  

“That’s true. But there’s a lot of art around today that has the dour veneer of seriousness, but is actually just a bit s***,” he says bluntly.

Success hasn’t dented Perry’s readiness to take a swing at whatever gets his goat. And at a time when even modestly successful artists surround themselves with protective networks of dealers, assistants and studio managers, Perry – arguably Britain’s most famous and popular artist – seems startlingly open and available. He answers the door to his studio himself, makes the coffee – “It’s instant, is that OK?” – and within moments we’re chatting away as though we’ve known each other for years. The studio is a surprisingly small, garage-like space, and Perry’s manner of dress is by his standards modest: pink T-shirt and brilliantly coloured dungarees. (The pattern proves on close inspection to depict female genitalia rather than flowers as I initially thought, but what do you expect?) 

“There’s a lot of art around that feels like student work,” he says. “Like it hasn’t occurred to the artist that anyone else might have thought that climate change is a bad thing.” 

With cancel culture making us all ever more desperate not to offend, Perry’s frankness is refreshing, whether he’s dismissing “upper middle intellectuals who are dead from the neck downwards” or young climate-conscious artists who are already “behind the times, mate”.    

But his Edinburgh show, which opened on 22 July, is clearly the thing most on his mind today. “What I’d really like to do,” he says in a tone almost of wonder, “is to go round it with someone who doesn’t know me or my work, but is receptive to art. Just to see what they make of it.” 

Which takes me back to my first sighting of Perry’s work at the 2003 Turner Prize exhibition. He was the outsider among the four contenders, with the Chapman Brothers firm favourites, and completely unknown to me. But peering at the ornate surface of one of his mock-grandiose vases, I caught sight of a sulky teenage girl’s face with the words, “F*** off you middle-class tourist”. I was instantly a fan. Perry lets out a ringing, almost satanic cackle at this recollection – a classic Perry laugh, and one of numerous that punctuate our conversation. “I’m glad you had that experience. That’s exactly the reaction I would like.”  

Anyone who gets at all popular in Britain has to be aware that there are plenty of people who will relish seeing them fall

His work’s mixture of self-mocking craftsmanship – he denies to this day that he’s a good potter – and edgy humour clearly spoke to many. Within 48 hours of my first sighting of his work, Perry had accepted Britain’s best-known art prize as his female alter ego Claire, with the classic headline-grabbing utterance “What the art world needs is a transvestite potter” – and had instantly become a national figure. Over the subsequent 20 years, he’s made himself so ubiquitous across so many areas of British life that I feel I can hardly get to the thing that is supposedly his raison d’etre: his art. 

“Yeah, all those things do affect my art, I’m sure. I’m well organised. I make sure there’s plenty of time for the work I need to produce. But popularity is something I’ve flirted with for years, precisely because it’s so frowned upon by the po-faced contemporary art establishment. And I’m talking about genuine popularity rather than, ‘Oh look, here’s a theme park ride we can all go on!’”  

Theme park rides? Who could he mean?   

“I remember watching people going on Carsten Holler’s slides” – the German artist’s stainless steel slides exhibited at Tate Modern to great excitement in 2006 – “and thinking, ‘They’re enjoying that, but do they think it’s good art?’”  

Perry clearly thought it wasn’t. But does he now feel genuinely popular himself?  

“Yeah,” he shrugs, with a “why wouldn’t I” nonchalance. And despite two decades of hyper-visibility, he has never faced a backlash. The idea that a transvestite is best placed to lecture British men on masculinity and the need to show vulnerability hasn’t become annoying. There have been grumbles from snooty critics – who, me? – but neither the British public, nor the media, nor the so-called art world have quite got fed up with Grayson Perry.   

“Well, we’ll see,” he says. “I’ve been waiting 20 years for it to happen. Anyone who gets at all popular in Britain has to be aware that there are plenty of people who will relish seeing them fall.”  

Perry is such an adept interviewee that it’s hard to get past the practised blokey affability and even start to get a rise out of him. He effortlessly shrugs off suggestions that would seriously annoy most other artists: that he is essentially a product of the British love for a “character” (“Of course, but it’s not an act”); that he’s the David Hockney of his generation (“Totally”). Perry only really raises his eyebrows when I suggest that he doesn’t just love the work of so-called “outsider artists” – now officially known as “self-taught artists” – he actually is an outsider artist himself. 

Perry has made known his enthusiasm for, and debt to, marginal artists with startling personality particularities, such as Henry Darger – a great favourite of Perry’s. Darger was an American janitor who left behind a 5,000-page autobiography and hundreds of drawings depicting horrific battles between armies of baby girls. While “normal” artists have been taking inspiration from such figures at least since the interwar heyday of the Surrealists, and Perry clearly regards his own interest as falling within that tradition, he has far more in common with artists like Darger than he might like to admit.

Much of Perry’s work has little to do with the contemporary art mainstream. The conceptual framing that is such a feature of most contemporary art these days barely figures in his. His troubled family background (Perry fled his bullying stepfather, but was turfed out by his real father when he was found aged 15 putting on women’s clothes) isn’t an affectation. Works like his pink motorbike with a shrine to his childhood teddy Alan Measles on the back are presented as jokes on himself, but are actually much more genuine and “sincere” than we might assume.   

“I make things that require a fair bit of skill, if that’s what you mean. They take a long time to make. They’re special! I don’t want to walk into a gallery and see any old bit of junk that’s been dragged in and anointed with the magic fairy dust of contemporary art in a way that goes back to Marcel Duchamp [who famously turned a urinal into a work of art in 1917]. That fairy dust is now worn out. It’s been done.”  

Maybe the key to Perry’s popularity, far more than the jovial transvestism, is the fact that the ordinary gallerygoer can imagine themselves making his work in a way they certainly couldn’t with a piece of hardcore conceptualism. “Yeah, I think that’s why  Grayson’s Art Club  (his lockdown TV show in which he gave art classes) was so successful. People saw me working alongside them in a way they could understand. I’ve loved the fact that people have come up to me since my Edinburgh show opened and said they were inspired by it to make their own art.”  

I was a very angry, messed-up 20-year-old, and I think I projected a lot of difficult parental stuff onto dealers

Yet at the same time I’m struck, talking to Perry, and reading his essay in the exhibition catalogue, by how frequently he uses that vexed term “the art world”. Where I’ve always understood it to mean the commercial art world, with its dealers, curators, collectors and hangers-on, rather than actual art or artists, for Perry it seems a catch-all for everything that art is. And while he’s made it his mission to call this milieu to account for its pretentiousness and elitism, he expresses anxiety again and again that he was “nervous of [his] position in the art world” or “lacked confidence” in it. Why, if he’s such a free spirit, did he even care?   

“It’s a dance!” he says, in a tone almost of exasperation. “I was ambitious! The young person who wants to rebel is inevitably embraced by the art world. The 20th century was a succession of challenges to the art establishment. And by the time I came along, I felt we were running out of angles. I chose pottery because it was beyond the pale somehow, it had the taint of craft. Right up to when I won the Turner Prize, the powers that be were pushing back with, ‘Oh, they’re just pots.’” 

Yet Perry’s approach to the art world seems to betray an almost childlike sense of need. Maybe after his troubled childhood, he was looking to the art world as a kind of surrogate family.  

Perry concedes this could be true. “I used to have a very screwed-up relationship with the dealers who were trying to sell my work – before I had therapy. I was a very angry, messed-up 20-year-old, and I think I projected a lot of difficult parental stuff onto dealers.”  

And that relationship seems to have had a strong element of the Oedipal. “It could be. You don’t get into the culture business without a desperate need for validation.” 

Oedipus, of course, slept with his mother, then killed his father – or maybe the other way round. This elicits the biggest guffaw yet from Perry. But maybe, I suggest, his urge to destroy the art world has subsided a bit. 

“I don’t think I’m alone in that. Maybe I’m more self-conscious around that world now. But I still enjoy looking for discomfort in the faces of the overeducated,” he chuckles. “If there’s one category of people who continually get in my crosshairs, it’s the upper middle classes – the Hampstead intellectual, book-lined study kind of person.”  

I tell him his concept of intellectuals feels a touch dated. Nowadays intellectuals would be lucky to get a flat in Walthamstow, never mind a house in Hampstead. When he refers to the upper middle classes, he’s surely talking about what used to be called the intelligentsia.   

“I’m talking about the intelligentsia, and they of course are my world. Most of my friends are in that category, and probably me too. That’s why I love teasing them.”  

Indeed, as he admits in his catalogue essay, as Sir Grayson Perry he is now very much part of the establishment.  

“God, yes. There’s nothing worse than the threadbare Mohican of the person who’s still banging on about being a rebel when they’re in the upper echelons of the culture establishment. And nowadays that’s an interesting place to be. You have a certain amount of power, and you can play with that. 

“No,” he says with a sigh, “I can’t pretend to be a rebel any more.”  

‘Smash Hits’ is at the National Galleries of Scotland (Royal Scottish Academy) until 12 November

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Julie Cope’s Grand Tour: The Story of a Life by Grayson Perry

Dovecot studios presents the first solo exhibition in scotland of turner prize winner and renowned ceramicist and tapestry artist grayson perry..

Bursting with life and colour is the first Scotland-based solo exhibition of Turner Prize winner Grayson Perry . Renowned and celebrated for his employment of traditional craft making techniques, predominantly in the form of ceramics and tapestry making, it seems fitting that Grayson Perry’s first solo show in Scotland is hosted by Dovecot Studios . The exhibition presents Julie Cope’s Grand Tour: The Story of Life by Grayson Perry , which explores the fictional life of Perry’s character, Julie Cope.

Designed to represent the anyone and everyone, Julie Cope embodies the celebrations and pitfalls of an average life. Often finding that Essex, his home town, is portrayed in a certain light, Perry wanted the exhibition to explore an alternative Essex, one more representative of everyday reality and local activities. Told through large sprawling tapestries, prints and a ballad spoken by Perry, the life of Julie Cope is one of love, spirals, hope and tragedy.

The exhibition pulsates with liveliness; present not only in the incredibly impressive and large-scale tapestries, but also in the minute details such as the yellow and pink cabling that present the ballad which is played on loop. Despite the large scale of the tapestries, their slanting layouts on canvas-like frames create an intimate atmosphere in the space. The walls are lined with pink and it very much feels as if Dovecot has been transformed into Grayson Perry’s ultimate interior. The ballad sounding with his voice draws the viewer in more closely, allowing for a multifaceted viewing experience.

The threads of the tapestries boast an incredibly impressive blend of details, each documenting and presenting various stages in Julie Cope’s life. Perry’s voice rings resolutely through the speakers, taking the viewer on a journey into his imagination. The exhibition is a vibrant invitation into the life of Julie Cope and is a life that speaks to everyone in some way or another. Through her narrative, Perry has succeeded in capturing the essence of life and human fragility. Documenting her journey from her birth in the Canvey Island Floods of 1953 to her tragic untimely death, Perry takes the viewer on a spiralling journey of his fictitious character.

Often employing collaborative working methods within his practice, Perry’s tapestries have been constructed in collaboration with Flanders Tapestries . Designed by the artist utilising an interactive pen display, the compositions were then translated into codes for a digital loom. Alongside this, Perry has collaborated with FAT Architecture for Living Architecture to design A House for Essex . This sees the creation of his most ambitious artwork so far – a real life house. Perry created several whimsical versions of the house, drawing heavily on influences from India, in particular the Taj Mahal, as well as secular chapels.

Within Dovecot Studios, his collaborations with the architectural firms are explored and displayed in a museum-like layout, giving the viewer an insight into both his working methods and the process of construction. Ceramic tiles which adorn the house, architectural renders and films of Perry during his site visits all harbour and allow the viewer to engage more closely with both Grayson Perry and his fictional lady, Julie Cope.

Culture | TV

Grayson Perry’s Full English on Channel 4 review: a typically incisive look at what it means to be English

It’s no use saying “Don’t mention the War!” We’re less than five minutes into the first episode of Grayson Perry ’s new Channel 4 series when the Second World War rears its tiresome head in a conversation with Dover ’s leading self-appointed migrant -spotter, Jeremy Davis, because of course he’s called Jeremy, and of course he’s obsessed with the war.

If you were expecting cosiness from Grayson Perry’s Full English, a road trip through England with a white van man (his name is Kirk, he’s from Yorkshire) on a foray into what it means to be English, then look away now. This first episode, set around the South East, kicks us off right in the thick of the country’s thorniest debate. Perry opens the series in Dover, where nearly 50,000 people a year are landing after undertaking the treacherous, terrifying trip across the Channel.

Jeremy, who is a wedding DJ with a whispy white mane and a beady necklace, and who you couldn’t invent if you tried, is deeply concerned by all this. He has set up a Twitter feed, and makes propaganda videos to alert people to the arrivals, whom he calls “illegals without IDs”.

“We don’t know who these people are,” he frets. “Something terrible is going to happen.”

They’re looking for a home, Perry says, mildly (though do I detect a hint of frustration?). “They’ve got a home, they’re looking for a better home,” is Jeremy’s quick retort, which I suppose is technically true but doesn’t really tell the full story, particularly if they come from, I dunno, Syria, or Afghanistan.

What exactly is he defending? “It’s history,” comes the wiffly response; “My family – they’re all military – they all fought for this country, they all love this country; it’s that, I suppose,” which is startlingly vague considering how dedicated Jeremy is to his unformed cause. As Perry says, Jeremy’s notion of this country is one of “a bygone England, one that bears little resemblance to the multicultural country we live in today”.

Perry, whose previous TV series have looked at class through the prism of taste; ideas of masculinity; and rites of passage across cultures, always has an art angle on his investigations. This time, he is collecting items from the people he encounters which, for them, exemplify what it means to be English. Jeremy’s is not a surprise – a silver salver that belonged to an ancestor who defended the port of Lisbon during, you guessed it, the Second World War. He thinks the notional similarity between what they do is “poetic”, though I’d use another p word.

Anyway, it’s a great start to a show that comes at the concept of who we are from unexpected angles. Perry’s second interviewee, Jay, is a data analyst and football fan from Lambeth, one of London’s most culturally diverse boroughs; a black man who is a veteran of more than 100 England matches, and whose crystalline, articulate discussion of Englishness is so far from Jeremy’s flabby waffle as to make you want to weep with national pride.

His England is that of the now. “It’s important to me that my version of England is seen as being English,” he tells Perry over a pint in Munich, where England are playing, surrounded by genially pissed up footie fans. These include two of his white mates who look as though this is literally the first time they’ve ever thought about this, which might well be the case. His chosen object is an England flag, dedicated to his late pal Jimmy, a man from a different background and different generation, who became his best mate through their shared passion for football.

And I haven’t even told you about the British Druid Order, whose gentle but steely dedication to their softcore paganism (up in popularity by 25 per cent in recent years, though still, it appears, a majority middle-aged religion) is a delight to behold as they take Perry, dressed up as a deer (and this is very much his bag, you feel), along on one of their rituals to honour the spirits of nature.

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They’re a practical, make-do sort of bunch – the guy dressed as a corvid retains his blazer, which sort of feels in keeping with the role in a Neil Gaiman-ish sort of way, and I particularly loved the willow lady, whose green floaty dress almost certainly had a previous life at a summer wedding.

They too have thought hard about what it means to be part of this England, with its deep, gnarly folklore and dark magic. The order’s founder, Greywolf (otherwise know as Philip) can trace his ancestry to 20 years after the Domesday Book – and he doesn’t give a monkey’s. He doesn’t really believe in national borders, and calls nationalism “an abomination”.

“After the last Ice Age, there were no people here,” he points out. “People have been arriving ever since, and they’re still arriving. As far as I’m concerned, if you arrived here yesterday on a small boat across the Channel, you’re every bit as English as I am.” Jeremy would have a fit. The contrast between these two weirdy, unbeardy, long-haired old men couldn’t be more stark.

Perry is an old hand at this now, and it shows – perhaps the reason for bringing Kirk along as his sidekick. It’s a slightly odd pairing, and isn’t quite working one episode in – the moments where Perry tells Kirk his impressions of what he’s seen, which he might have addressed straight to the camera before, feel a tad contrived and ever so slightly condescending.

I hope Kirk, who seems slightly bemused by the whole thing, will come into his own as the series progresses, perhaps in episode three, when the pair get onto his home turf of the North. This feels bittier than previous series, but perhaps that’s because we’re now so used to Perry’s genially incisive modus operandi.

This is a promising start though. Perry ends by joining a friendly group in the world’s most polite protest (they have a procession, climb over a fence, and sit under an oak they’re not meant to sit under, listening to folk songs) against the limiting of access for the public to vast swathes of England. They highlight the dichotomy of the English obsession with hierarchy – which allows the private ownership of insanely large amounts of hill and dale – sitting uncomfortably alongside our deep conviction that our nationhood is tied up with the land.

Their last protest, they tell Perry, was on the land of the Duke of Bedford, who owns an estate of roughly 52,000 acres (more than twice the size of the Caribbean island of Montserrat, the World Land Trust tells me). “What can he be doing that he can possibly require that much privacy?” one asks, which seems like a reasonable question when you put it like that.

The next episode, trailed at the end of the first, will take Perry and Kirk to the Midlands, to a non-white England that will, I hope, open up ideas of what this country is beyond nostalgia for half-remembered, half-understood pasts. “When do you feel English?” he asks a South Asian family over dinner. “When I go to India!” comes the reply, and they all hoot with laughter.

Grayson Perry’s Full English starts on Channel 4 on Thursday January 26 at 9pm

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GRAYSON PERRY: A SHOW ALL ABOUT YOU to Tour in 2023

Tickets go on general sale on 18 November

FANE are delighted to announce that contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster Grayson Perry will be embarking on a UK tour for 2023.

The tour will begin in Basingstoke on 15th September 2023 and conclude at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London on 28th November. Priority tickets go on sale at 10am Thursday 17th November with general on sale taking place Friday 18th November.

Grayson Perry: A show All About you questions what makes you, you? Is there a part deep inside of you that no one understands? Have you found your tribe or are you a unique human being? Or is it more complicated than that? In the last few decades a combination of individualism, the internet and the culture war has, for many of us, brought our feelings about our own and other people's identity to the fore.

Grayson Perry, white, male, heterosexual, able bodied, English, southerner, baby boomer and member of the establishment takes a mischievous look at the nature of identity in his new show that will make you laugh, shudder, and reassess who you really are. It's one not to be missed!

Grayson Perry is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster. He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene and for dissecting British "prejudices, fashions and foibles".

In 2003, he became famous as the first ceramic artist to win the Turner Prize and was awarded a CBE in 2014. In 2020 he became the first British Artist to win the Erasmus Prize since Henry Moore . Along with his art, Grayson has written and presented documentaries. The first one was for Channel 4 entitled Why Men Wear Frocks, an adaptation from the book, Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl in which he examined transvestism and masculinity in the 21st century. Grayson spoke candidly about his own experiences and the effect it has had on him and his family. The documentary received a Royal Television Society Award for Best Network Production.

In 2012 his C4 series, All in the Best Possible Taste received a BAFTA for Specialist Factional Television. Grayson's C4 programme Who Are You? led to the accompanying artwork from the series being housed in the National Portrait Gallery, a first for the Gallery. The programme was awarded Best Arts Programme at The Royal Television Society Programme Awards and Specialist Factual at the BAFTAs, that year Grayson was also awarded Documentary Presenter of the Year at The Grierson Awards.

In 2013 he delivered the BBC Reith Lectures, another first for him as the first artist to do so.

His publishing ranges from an autobiography The Descent of Man (2016) and a graphic novel Cycle of Violence (2012). Playing to the Gallery (2014) derived from The Reith Lectures along with his illustrated Sketchbooks (2016).Grayson took to Twitter to navigate post-Brexit Britain in his own inimitable style by inviting C4 viewers to help create his next major work - The two pots featured in the series Grayson Perry: What Britain Wants and also as apart of Grayson's most important British solo exhibition, 'The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever', which was held at the Serpentine Gallery in June 2017. In late 2017, Grayson won Best Documentary Presenter at The Grierson Awards for the third time following the broadcast of Grayson Perry: All Man for C4. Summer of 2018 saw Grayson co-ordinate the 250th Celebration of The Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition. Along with fellow artists, Grayson handpicked over 1,300 works to make up the biggest, brightest and most colourful exhibition under the theme of Art Made Now. Rites of Passage, again for C4, was aired in 2018. This explored the ceremonies and rituals surrounding some of life's landmark events; Birth, Coming of Age, Marriage and Death. Them and Us, Grayson's first UK one man show, toured later that year discussing 'cultural divisions' within the world we live in today. He was invited to tour Australia late 2019 and early 2020.

Throughout the global pandemic, Grayson made it his mission to unleash creative collectively and unite the nation through art, turning the camera back on the viewer with the challenge: have a go yourself. Grayson's Art Club aired each week from his studio - taking the country with him as he created new art works throughout lockdown. The art created was displayed in a public exhibition, that chronicled the changing moods of Britain and provided a record of the historic times we're living through. The programme won the Arts and Presenter's Award at the 2021 RTS Programme Awards, shortly after it returned for a second series. Grayson Perry's Big American Road Trip, also aired in 2021, which saw him explore the changing landscape of Trump's America; from race to class and identity.

Grayson Perry said: "I can't wait to head back out on the road next autumn with my brand-new show - which is all about you! I will be visiting almost every corner of the country in my biggest tour yet. Don't be a stranger. See you there."

Recommended For You

GRAYSON PERRY | A SHOW ALL ABOUT YOU

Artist, writer and broadcaster Grayson Perry is going on a national tour which will see him take to the stage of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane for his last show. His Show All About You will ask: what makes you, you? Perry will take a mischievous look at the nature of identity – something that’s certainly been brought to the front of our minds in recent years – in ways that’ll make you laugh and/or shudder. Tickets are on sale now, so snap ’em up while you can.

Tues 28th November 2023 Catherine St, London WC2B 5JF fane.co.uk

Like That? You'll Love This

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Grayson Perry, The Vanity of Small Differences

Grayson Perry's The Vanity of Small Differences tells the story of class mobility and the influence social class has on our aesthetic taste. Inspired by William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress, the six tapestries chart the 'class journey' made by young Tim Rakewell and include many of the characters, incidents and objects Grayson Perry encountered on his journeys and experiences throughout Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and The Cotswolds for the television series 'All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry ', which first aired on Channel 4 in June 2012.

In the series Perry goes on 'a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain', to gather inspiration for his artwork, literally weaving the characters he meets into a narrative, with an attention to the minutiae of contemporary taste every bit as acute as that in Hogarth's 18th century paintings.

Grayson Perry is a great chronicler of contemporary life, drawing us in with wit, affecting sentiment and nostalgia as well as, at times, fear and anger. In his work, Perry tackles subjects that are universally human: identity, gender, social status, sexuality, religion. Autobiographical references – to the artist’s childhood, his family and his transvestism – can be read in tandem with questions about décor and decorum, class and taste, and the status of the artist versus that of the artisan.

Arts Council Collection, Southbank Centre London and British Council. 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.

Tour Dates and Venues

Wentworth Woodhouse , Rotherham

29 June 2023 - 3 September 2023

Lincoln Museum , Lincolnshire

23 September 2023 - 21 January 2023

The Lightbox , Woking

27 January 2024 - 7 July 2024

Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery, London

July 2024 - December 2024

Build Your Own Sculptures

Build and design sculptures inspired by Grayson Perry's tapestries in your own learning environment!

To accompany the 2020-21 tour of Grayson Perry's The Vanity of Small Differences, graphic designer, Alex Josephine Gwynne, has created a series of fun 3D paper sculptures for you to download and make.

Inspired by characters from Perry’s series of tapestries, each model is available as a full colour template. We suggest printing them at A4 or A3 on white paper or thin card about 160gsm.

Download the templates

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Grayson Perry announces tour for 2023

FANE are delighted to announce that contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster  Grayson Perry  will be embarking on a UK tour for 2023. The tour will begin in Basingstoke on 15 th  September 2023 and conclude at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London on 28 th  November. Priority tickets go on sale at 10am Thursday 17 th  November with general on sale taking place Friday 18 th  November. Tickets are available via:

www.fane.co.uk/grayson-perry

Grayson Perry: A show All About you questions what makes you, you? Is there a part deep inside of you that no one understands? Have you found your tribe or are you a unique human being? Or is it more complicated than that? In the last few decades a combination of individualism, the internet and the culture war has, for many of us, brought our feelings about our own and other people’s identity to the fore.

Grayson Perry, white, male, heterosexual, able bodied, English, southerner, baby boomer and member of the establishment takes a mischievous look at the nature of identity in his new show that will make you laugh, shudder, and reassess who you really are. It’s one not to be missed!

Grayson Perry is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster. He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene and for dissecting British “prejudices, fashions and foibles”.

In 2003, he became famous as the first ceramic artist to win the Turner Prize and was awarded a CBE in 2014. In 2020 he became the first British Artist to win the Erasmus Prize since Henry Moore. Along with his art, Grayson has written and presented documentaries. The first one was for Channel 4 entitled Why Men Wear Frocks, an adaptation from the book, Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl in which he examined transvestism and masculinity in the 21st century. Grayson spoke candidly about his own experiences and the effect it has had on him and his family. The documentary received a Royal Television Society Award for Best Network Production.

In 2012 his C4 series, All in the Best Possible Taste received a BAFTA for Specialist Factional Television. Grayson’s C4 programme Who Are You? led to the accompanying artwork from the series being housed in the National Portrait Gallery, a first for the Gallery. The programme was awarded Best Arts Programme at The Royal Television Society Programme Awards and Specialist Factual at the BAFTAs, that year Grayson was also awarded Documentary Presenter of the Year at The Grierson Awards.

Throughout the global pandemic, Grayson made it his mission to unleash creative collectively and unite the nation through art, turning the camera back on the viewer with the challenge: have a go yourself. Grayson’s Art Club aired each week from his studio – taking the country with him as he created new art works throughout lockdown. The art created was displayed in a public exhibition, that chronicled the changing moods of Britain and provided a record of the historic times we’re living through. The programme won the Arts and Presenter’s Award at the 2021 RTS Programme Awards, shortly after it returned for a second series. Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip, also aired in 2021, which saw him explore the changing landscape of Trump’s America; from race to class and identity.

Grayson Perry said:  “I can’t wait to head back out on the road next autumn with my brand-new show – which is all about you! I will be visiting almost every corner of the country in my biggest tour yet. Don’t be a stranger. See you there.”

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Grayson Perry’s Full English review – dangerously close to tainting the artist’s brand

This series isn’t the first time Perry has explored England’s national identity, and it’s getting repetitive. It’s not helped by his failure to tackle one participant’s troubling xenophobia

T he artist Grayson Perry has been mining a profitable seam for a while now, making documentaries that in essence ask the English to explain themselves. Profitable in the widest sense, I mean – though obviously I hope and presume he is paid a fair wage for his work. The interrogations of class (in All in the Best Possible Taste With Grayson Perry ), masculinity ( All Man ) and other forms of identity (in, for example, Divided Britain, which interviewed leavers and remainers about Brexit), in unhurried programmes directed by Neil Crombie, have all been fresh and illuminating. They are full of insights – provided by the endlessly perceptive Perry himself or by the interviewees who open up under his warm curiosity and direct, unaggressive questioning.

In the opening episode of the latest offering, Grayson Perry’s Full English (Channel 4), which is produced by Crombie but has a new director, things seem to have gone awry. Partly, I suspect, this is due to a growing sense of old ground being retrodden. Perry’s mission is to explore what people mean by “Englishness” through interviewing denizens of the north, south and the Midlands (collecting their donations to a planned exhibition on the subject that he will create when he gets home). “Is it an identity binding us or a fantasy keeping us stuck in the past?”

These are questions that have already been at least partly addressed in his previous films. Of course it is a fertile field and you can see why they have returned to it for a less oblique study. But a hint of overexposure is there, and it taints a brand like Perry’s that is predicated on him being an outsider – not part of the usual presenter gang who are known for A Thing and are prepared to squeeze every last drop out of it.

There is also the matter of his lacklustre partner, Kirk, who drives him around in a white van and seems cowed into near silence either by his passenger or the presence of the cameras. What could be – and were presumably meant to be – a robust exchange of views (or at least banter) as they go from venue to venue instead comprises Perry throwing out ideas and getting little back.

Perry’s first port of call is Dover, where he meets wedding DJ Jeremy and what I suspect Jeremy likes to think of as his flowing mane of white hair. When not wedding DJing, Jeremy patrols the waters in his boat, keeping an eye out for “people arriving here who shouldn’t be arriving here” and updating his social media accounts with news of what he sees. “They’re human beings,” he assures us. “We’re not out to sink them.” Perry remarks that people coming here in search of a home don’t seem too threatening to him. “They have homes,” says Jeremy. “They want better homes.” He patrols and informs, he says, because he loves this country and wants to protect it as generations of his military family did before him. “It’s in my blood. There are people here illegally, who are awaiting trial for rape, murder.” He acknowledges that we have our own rapists and murderers too, but we are soon into his objections to “children being taught that whiteness is bad” and so on.

Unlike his approach to less emotive subjects such as class, taste or masculinity, however, Perry barely probes deeper into the matter. But surely he is there to question what many would call a racist’s psyche, and either dismantle their arguments or grant the existence of an occasional kernel of truth (some people do come for a better life rather than simple succour – why, how and should that change things?). If he is not here to mark the difference between the second option and the rabid froth that gathers round it, what is Perry’s job?

He is much happier meeting modern druids (for me the most beautifully and purely English thing on display is the faint air of embarrassment that hangs around their reenactment of ancient ritual, and the fact that they are led by Greywolf, whose real name is Philip). The same applies to those trying to re-establish “the culture of the commons” – general access to the thousands of private acres accumulated by a handful of families since enclosure began. These moments function as nice little recaps of history, but again: it’s the discussions Perry has with ordinary people that we come for, not that. He does manage a little of that in Full English, primarily with Black football fan Jay, who takes him round Lambeth to show Perry his England, complete with strong Caribbean vibes and West Indian influences, “even if it isn’t around the rest of the country”.

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I suspect things will improve as Perry moves north and, as his publicity interviews suggest, a stronger sense of regionalism and less discomfiting nationalism takes over. But the first episode leaves you wanting more – in a less positive sense than his outings usually do.

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