Grayson Perry is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster. He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries and cross dressing, according to Wikipedia. To me, that is reductive as saying, if I had won the Turner prize, I'm known for my background in architecture, stencil art rockstars and died hair. Or tiny frame. I might be, but it's reductive and does not inform my knowledge of his art. Or maybe it does. The contribution of his art. And being No.32 on the top 100 most powerful people in British Culture. Sucked in established art world, huh? I know him for the way he uses contemporary culture in his work. He is fascinated with it.
I would say he is my favourite artist. The most significant thing about him is how nice he is. Humble and interested in you. Lovely. Thats also what I know him for if we are commenting outside of his art.
Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright and / or luxurious colours colours, sometimes gold. And pink. It's very 'pretty' work. Reminiscent of Japanese and Greek ceramics. Yet it is only when you are drawn closer you notice the vases depict subjects seemingly at odds with their attractive appearance. Like Andreas Gursky, the near and the far are important with all of Perry's work.
My first memory of seeing this work close up is breezing past a bunch, not being engaged enough to stop until I spotted 'Nirvana' written on one. Then I went back and looked at them all. All 50. Humour is also very important to his work. And that is what engages me.
There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", his female alter-ego, and "Alan Measles", his childhood teddy bear, often appear.
The Vanity of Small Differences is a series of six tapestries by Grayson Perry. ‘The title ‘The vanity of small differences' is a Freudian term which means that we dislike no one quite so much as our nearest neighbour.
The tapestries tell the storey inspired by William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress in which eight paintings tell the story of Tom Rakewell, a young man who inherits a fortune from his miserly father, spends it all on fashionable pursuits and gambling, marries for money, gambles away a second fortune, goes to debtors' prison and dies in a madhouse. Loaded with iconography as symbols of class (and taste), the series of sketches were actually translated in Adobe Photoshop. So, deconstructive montage.
The Vanity of Small Differences is composed of characters, incidents and objects Perry encountered on journeys through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and The Cotswolds whilst filming a TV series based on taste. It is worth looking back at this series for composition and content. He is jamming us with what taste is 'selling'.
Yet, these are huge, the vases round. His work demands you seeing it in a real, 3D space. To move around it, in and out, across it. I have to remember that is an important aspect that it the opposite to mine. A lot smaller and (for now) only viewable on the 2D platform the content was primarily taken from (that being the point). Keep it to the one simple visual joke. For clarity and effect. Yet I reckon I could work Grayson Perry's practice into my research for any project. We are interested in the same things and we come from the same place age wise, class wise and ideologically. I don't think there are any creatives in either of our families. We both lived with muso's in the 80s. I think he has influenced my work heavily since first seeing his work only 5 years ago. Isn't it weird, it's the small differences you obsess about when similar, but use broad brush strokes to paint the similarities when you want. Humans are strange. In that, Perry and I agree. its what drives our work.
