Grayson Perry

Alan Measles, Perry’s childhood teddy bear, who he also regards as ‘surrogate father, metaphor for God… and the benign dictator of my childhood’ features in numerous works, including Alan Healing the Wound, 2021. ‘As a child,’ Perry says ‘I projected a lot of stuff onto him . He became a kind of parent to me. I like to take Alan into different parts of world culture. I’ve been looking at amazing Chola bronzes from Southern India. I love the style. He’s a kind of Hindu deity mixed with a Christian reliquary Madonna and child. Alan the surrogate father goddess.’

Chris Whitty’s Cat, 2020, was created as part of the first series of Grayson Perry’s acclaimed Grayson’s Art Club, broadcast on Channel 4. Writing about the work in 2020, Perry said, ‘When lockdown first started back in March my wife Philippa and I went for a walk around the deserted City of London one evening. We came back through Gough Square where Samuel Johnson’s house is and a sculpture of his cat Hodge. When I saw this small life-sized memorial to a pet I was inspired. I was thinking of London and its myths, like Dick Whittington whose cat has its own statue on Highgate Hill. Chris Whitty is the Chief Medical officer for England and Chief advisor to the government during the crisis. He has become the face of the Covid pandemic. Chris Whitty’s cat is a domestic scale monument to the strange year we are all living through. This plague cat is covered in pustules and boils made decorative. Its form is inspired by an ancient Islamic incense burner.’

Credit Card, A13, Van Eyck, Microprocessor is a new tapestry created, Perry explains, because ‘I wanted to make something from the stuff of normal life, money, commuting, marriage, the internet. I layered the four images one on top of the other and then rubbed through them digitally until I could just about make out all four. It looks like a small worn carpet, a prayer mat, the first thing my feet might touch in the morning, grateful to be alive, another normal day.’

Luxury Brands for Social Justice, 2017, looks at the assertion of identity through cultural or consumer choices and what these reveal about us, intentionally or otherwise.

Perry’s inspiration for Mr Chonky Chonk, 2021, was ‘looking at the person in front when you’re in the supermarket. You’re making a character assessment from their basket. I found this pre-Columbian, Peruvian ceramic pot. He’s a chunky kind of guy. A good starting point for a pot about food. I fired on transfers from photos of things in my kitchen. My auntie could spread the perfect Marmite toast. That was a big part of my childhood.’

A new work, the large-scale etching Our Town, 2022, is a map inspired by Perry’s experience of social media during lockdown, a place that to the artist seems ‘quaint… but beneath the surface it is seething with snobbery, grievance and disappointment. Wherever you go you could trip over a modern cliché or an annoying neologism. Words are boxes and triggers and slurs. It is best to be a wry flâneur in Our Town.’

Decorated with images of beaming individuals, blissfully happy at work or at sun-kissed leisure, Searching for Authenticity broaches the slippery concepts of meaning and significance, life and lifestyle – what can be authentically experienced or simply acquired. Writing about the work, Perry comments, ‘the narcissistic Instagram culture is a main theme. I often think that when people go on holiday they want to appear in the photographs they have seen in the brochure… Searching for Authenticity comes from my fascination with the rapidly crystallising clichés of the so-called “experience economy”. The global conformity of those who refuse to be labelled.’

Works on paper on view in Venice feature urban foxes. Perry writes, ‘I can remember the first time I saw an urban fox. I was so thrilled to see this piece of wildness wandering across the road nonchalantly. I like to go out on my bicycle around the town at night. They pop up all the time and their eyes glow in my lights. I have drawn, collaged and painted my encounters with Mr Fox.’

Works on paper on view in Venice feature urban foxes. Perry writes, ‘I can remember the first time I saw an urban fox. I was so thrilled to see this piece of wildness wandering across the road nonchalantly. I like to go out on my bicycle around the town at night. They pop up all the time and their eyes glow in my lights. I have drawn, collaged and painted my encounters with Mr Fox.’

Works on paper on view in Venice feature urban foxes. Perry writes, ‘I can remember the first time I saw an urban fox. I was so thrilled to see this piece of wildness wandering across the road nonchalantly. I like to go out on my bicycle around the town at night. They pop up all the time and their eyes glow in my lights. I have drawn, collaged and painted my encounters with Mr Fox.’