Grayson Perry: Posh Cloths

Earlier works include two tapestries made for A House for Essex, designed by Perry in collaboration with FAT Architecture in 2015 to evoke a wayside pilgrimage chapel which, instead of a patron saint, is dedicated to the life of a fictional character, Julie Cope. Completed in the style of Renaissance religious paintings, with the main characters shown several times in vignettes within each image, the tapestries illustrate key moments in Cope’s life. Writing about A Perfect Match, Perry says, ‘The title of this one is a quote from the long poem I wrote, “The Ballad of Julie Cope”: Friends all agreed they were “a perfect match”. Julie had met Dave, her first husband, as a teenager when he was guitarist in a band called The Riders of Rohan that played the pubs on the Essex Marshes. He worked in the Coryton Refinery and was an aspirational young man; he soon became a foreman… By the 1970s, Julie and Dave had moved to South Woodham Ferrers, a big new development that I lived very close to when I was growing up. But all is not rosy – at the bottom left you can see the pink hairbrush of Pam, the “other woman”, and the bunch of flowers in Julie’s hand with a message from Dave that reads: “I am so sorry x D”.’

In Battle of Britain, 2017, Perry creates a vista not dissimilar to the landscape of Essex that also, as the artist realised during its making, is redolent of Battle of Britain, 1941, by Paul Nash, one of Perry’s favourite paintings. He explains, ‘Having yet again acknowledged the power of the unconscious I continued with the work, playing up the associations and weaving in references to the current conflicts within our society.’

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.’

Earlier works include two tapestries made for A House for Essex, designed by Perry in collaboration with FAT Architecture in 2015 to evoke a wayside pilgrimage chapel which, instead of a patron saint, is dedicated to the life of a fictional character, Julie Cope. Completed in the style of Renaissance religious paintings, with the main characters shown several times in vignettes within each image, the tapestries illustrate key moments in Cope’s life. About In its Familiarity Golden, Perry writes: ‘This is the second half of Julie’s life. The title comes from another line in the poem I wrote, about how happiness isn’t “ecstasy, a fleeting peak” but rather “a wide fertile valley / In its familiarity, golden.” It’s the right idea that happiness is doing the quiet, regular, everyday things.’

Large Expensive Abstract Painting, 2019, is a tapestry that, bearing some of the hallmarks of twentieth century abstraction, is also a map of London – traversed by the familiar serpentine form of the Thames and containing words that appear to chime with the social forces, tastes and codes of their corresponding locations.

For Morris, Gainsborough, Turner, Riley, 2021, Perry combined imagery drawn from the history of British art, featuring work by William Morris, Thomas Gainsborough, JMW Turner and Bridget Riley. These works are not referenced outright; rather, they are digitally altered or adjusted, their colours and orientation changed within the tapestry’s rich and layered textures.

New works include Sacred Tribal Artefact, 2023. Perry explains, ‘My starting points for this tapestry were Persian Lion rugs, a tradition that goes back to the twelfth century, and American folk art, in the form of hooked rugs, which often depict a domestic cat. The Lion is a symbol of power, particularly male power in many cultures, even in countries where lions are not a native species, like England. I have drawn a rather tired, battered, ageing, defeated old patriarch who is handing over the sword and the tattered flag of England to a young woman. His coat is matted and is marked by traditional motifs from different lands. His fart is in the shape of a nuclear explosion. This work is a heraldic depiction of an ancient country in a time of change.’

The Digmoor Tapestry was inspired by conversations held during the filming of Perry’s 2016 Channel 4 series All Man. Perry writes, ‘This work is my reaction after talking to a group of young men from Skelmersdale, Lancashire. They are the victims of poverty, chaotic parenting, bad role models and disrupted education. They hung around street corners selling weed, riding motorbikes around parks and getting into fights with rival groups. They were at an age when a hormonal need to assert their masculinity was at its freshest. Deprived of acceptable badges of status, job, money, education, power and family, they exercised their masculinity in a way that seemed to echo back to the dawn of humanity – they defended territory. That territory was the Digmoor estate, a quadrant of a 1970s new town bounded by dual carriageways. They seemed prepared to kill for it. The Digmoor Tapestry is a map of the state the defended. The style was inspired by traditional African fabrics and the graffiti is taken directly from the boys’ environment. On seeing it one of them commented, “It looks like it’s been used to wrap up a body”.’

Very Large Very Expensive Abstract Painting, 2020, enfolds a map of Manhattan and a Jackson Pollock style abstraction within its imagery. Writing about the work, Perry notes, ‘If I think of American cultural power, the image that pops into my head is a huge Abstract Expressionist painting, a Cold War symbol of a self-confident land of the free. This tapestry is made up of layers that reflect some of the cultural and social archaeology of Manhattan.’