Grayson Perry 1960
Born in Chelmsford, Essex in 1960, Grayson Perry lives and works in London. He won the Turner Prize in 2003, was elected a Royal Academician in 2012, and received a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2013. He has been appointed a Trustee of the British Museum and Chancellor of the University of the Arts London (both in 2015) and received a RIBA Honorary Fellowship in 2016. He delivered The Reith Lectures for BBC Radio 4 in 2013.
Major exhibitions include 'Grayson's Art Club at Manchester Art Gallery (2021); 'The Pre-Therapy Years' at The Holburne Museum, Bath, travelling to York City Art Gallery and Sainsbury Centre for Visual Art, Norwich (2020-2021); 'The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!' at Serpentine Galleries, London (2017), travelling internationally 2015-2016; and 'The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman' at the British Museum (2011). 'The Vanity of Small Differences', first shown at Victoria Miro, London in 2012, was acquired by The Arts Council Collection and British Council and has toured throughout the UK and Europe. This work also began Perry’s acclaimed Channel 4 television series: All In the Best Possible Taste (2013) and Who Are You? (2014), both won BAFTAs, followed by All Man (2016), Rites of Passage (2018), Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip (2020), and Grayson’s Art Club (2020 and 2021).
Perry tackles subjects that are universally human: identity, gender, social status, sexuality, religion. He focuses on the details of contemporary life, drawing us in with wit, sentiment, and nostalgia as well as fear and anger. He combines autobiographical references to his childhood, his family, his transvestism and his teddy bear Alan Measles, with questions about class and taste, and the status of the artist versus the artisan. Perry uses traditional media such as ceramics, cast iron, bronze, printmaking and tapestry to comment on society, its pleasures as well as its injustices and flaws, and to explore a variety of historical and contemporary themes. He works with how each historic category of object accrues intellectual and emotional baggage over time.