Cathy's Art Diary

Fun interview at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival with Grayson Perry around his current exhibition at the Wallace Collection. This was a lively discussion wrangled by journalist and broadcaster Miranda Sawyer who led Perry into why he did the show and how he found himself reacting to a collection whose art he found he didn't like. As ever with Perry I found myself noting down quotes and soundbites to think about later such as "narrative is the most potent form of art", "I'm becoming a militant traditionalist", of AI "It's like a pedantic 14 year old" and of his studio set up "I have Colin who does the photocopying". Review Guardian  

Disappointing exhibition at the Wallace Collection of new work by Grayson Perry to mark his 65th birthday. I loved the art works in the show but found the narrative of it over engineered. As well as responding to the collection Perry had invented an artist called Shirley Smith who herself as an   alter ego – the Honourable Millicent Wallace, rightful heir to Hertford House, where the Wallace Collection is housed. Add in a strange introductory section on two outsider artists and I for one was a bit confused. The pieces would have worked well without this added layer just as responses got the collection. My favourite was a tapestry bringing together images from the collection in bright colours. Sadly there was no place you could stand and photograph the whole but have this section from it instead. As ever there were some interesting ceramics with fascinating commentary from Perry on the ideas behind them. I loved the big bold carpet in the last room and his take on a medieval ew...

Interesting exhibition at Charleston in Lewes of works by Grayson Perry relating to the idea of home. The show included tapestries, pots, prints and videos. My favourite were the two tapestries made for Julie's House, a real home designed by Perry in 2015 and telling the story of the fictional Julie Cope. I also loved the intricate prints of maps of imagined places such as “Our Town” from 2022 of a small cosy town and a mapped guide to a society that spends much of its time online. Closes 2 March 2025  

Interesting discussion at a Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival on outsider art. The event was chaired by Marc Steene, founder and director of the charity Outside In and author of “Outside In: Exploring the Margins of Art”. He was joined by artists Grayson Perry and Dannielle Hodson to discuss what outside art is, art outside the mainstream of the art world, and the diversity of creators. Perry talked about how outsider art had influenced him and whether work which involved craft skills, such as his ceramics, was in that category. Hodson had started from an outsider standpoint but is currently studying at the Royal Academy. They talked about whether knowing the story of an artist added to the work feeling that it adds “lustre to the work”. I loved Perry’s quote that “most art in most eras was rubbish really but time curated it”.  

Useful online lecture from ARTscapades looking at the career to date of Grayson Perry. Jacky Klein, author of a book of the same title of this talk, took us through Perry’s career   discussing how he used his Turner Prize win changed his fortunes and how he has used the profile that gave him to develop new work. She then took us through the five main themes in Perry’s work, class and taste, identity, gender and sexuality, politics and masculinity. She had some great illustrations and, having worked with him on his biography, gave us some interesting insights into his ideas.

Fun and thought provoking evening at the Royal Festival Hall seeing Grayson Perry’s latest one man show. It’s quite hard to describe the show as it’s party stand up comedy, part social commentary and, this time, with singing thrown in. I love the way he uses audience participation in a series of survey questions to establish what ‘normal’ is for that audience and shares comparisons from previous shows from around the country. I would say though that in the section I was sitting in the wifi didn’t work well enough for us to take part. It wasn’t just me being dense I heard muttering from around me too! I saw Perry’s previous show at the London Palladium and I think this one wasn’t as tight. That one, which was quite soon after Brexit, had a better arch to it and lead you down a garden path then twisted what you might have been thinking. I suspect this was a collection of lockdown musings which did make you think about how we end up as ‘normal’ however hard we may try to be differen...

Fas cinating little display at the Royal Academy focusing on Grayson Perry’s Diploma work, Map of Days (2013). Shown within the permanent exhibition “The Making of an Artist : The Great   Tradition” this large-scale etching, which he has described as a “self-portrait as a fortified town”, are a selection of prints and books from the RA Collection relating to Perry’s sources in creating Map of Days and at how artists traditionally created a sense of their identity in self-portraits. I loved an example of Renaissance printed map design for a fortress at Palmanova which is very close to Perry’s spikey structure as well as one of the photographs of Lost London than he used in the design. It was a nice touch to hang this unusual self-portrait of an artists mind along side other print self-portraits of academicians over the ages. Closes 31 December 2020  

Stunning exhibition at Victoria Miro Wharf Road of work by Grayson Perry inspired by his three-part Channel 4 documentary “Grayson Perry’s Big American Roadtrip”. I’d watched the tv programme and really enjoyed it but you don’t need to have seen it to appreciate the exhibition which consisted of a large tapestry, a map, five vases and six slipware platters. I loved the detail of the pieces. The longer you look at them the more you see. The tapestry, called “Very Large Very Expensive Abstract Painting”, is a layered map of New York with words about the city over a map over what appears an intricate background which looked to me like rugs. I loved the texture of it. There was a stunning vase called “War Head” which was shaped like a missile then had the silhouettes of missiles on it which were set up like the diagrams of slave ships and there were ghostly images of   Donald Trump in the background. A really haunting piece. I liked the slipware platters and their nod to ...

Moving installation at the British Museum by Grayson Perry. This work was originally produced for an exhibition at the museum which I annoyingly managed to miss, so I was really pleased to get another chance to at least see this work. It is an iron boat embossed and hung with replicas of items in the museum as a memorial to all the people who made them whose names are mainly forgotten to history. The vials on the piece represent the blood, sweat and tears which went into making these valued objects. I loved that this work was shown in front of the reconstruction of the ancient Greek Nereid monument, an imposing façade. Perry’s work held it’s own and could be seen as soon as your entered the large room, although in the current one way system you had to wait to emerge from the Parthenon Frieze before you could get close and see the details. Review Evening Standard

Stunning exhibition at Victoria Miro Mayfair of new work by Grayson Perry. The show included pots, sculpture, large-scale prints, a tapestry and a carpet and the commentary says he is looking at the “collision of art, money, power and desire.” The show does poke fun at itself, particularly in the range of handbags for Osprey, as it does acknowledge Perry’s place in this quandary between the monetary and cultural roles of art. There was a wonderful room of pots which you could walk around to look at the detail. I show a detail from “Shopping for Meaning” which included photographs of Perry outside famous shops by Eleni Parouisi. He has started working with the Martin Parr Archive which, as I love Martin Parr’s photographs, feels like a marriage of National Treasures. The tapestry was a map of London including words which relating to the geographic areas and yet it also has an abstract feel with drip like designs. I loved the carpet “Don’t Look Down” which showed a homel...

Vibrant discussion at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival between Grayson Perry and his wife Philippa ably  chaired by Helen Bagnall. Funny but insightful discussion about relationships and how they influence creativity. Philippa admitted that she had partly been driven to write books on psychology because of being jealously of the attention Grayson got when he won the Turner Prize which I thought was interesting and honest. Grayson commented on how people think artists are very Bohemian but he said “Artists are middle class professionals”. To create successful art you need to work hard and meet deadlines. There were some brilliant quotes on relationships “We form in a relationship” her and she said a relationship was about “mutual impact” which I loved. Also from her “Your authentic self is good enough” and “You can change your link in the chain”. They also talked about children and her book on bringing them up. He told us how drawing with...

Fun and thought provoking night at the London Palladium watching Grayson Perry. Not quite sure how to define this event but decided to include it because of who it was. Part of me wants to call it a stand-up comedy show but it had deeper resonance than that. Basically it was Perry setting the audience questions which we answered via small voting pads. He began by taking a profile of the audience and we had to say if we thought we were urban or rural and various other facets eventually fitting us into two main categories represented by flags. His premise was how we think about others, ie Them and Us. In the second half he went on to link this to the Brexit vote with clever twists which I won’t give away in case you go to see him on his tour. My favourite bit was the build up to the end of the first half when we voted to keep or reject art works for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, as Perry had done this year. Of course he gentle led us to reject a picture by Churchill a...

Charming exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery looking at a private photo album of Grayson Perry’s from when he was at Portsmouth Art School and developing his female persona of Claire.   Unlike the current flamboyant Claire this was a subdued, suburban version in 1980s clothes and I could see me and my friends in her. I loved the fact the album itself was the same as my own from that period with pictures held in with silicon sheets which had lost their stickiness so the pictures are now curling up and falling out.   I liked the fact there were copies on the walls as well shown again 1980s wallpaper and an AV of the page turning. A lovely insight into a specific time in an artist’s career. Closes on 3 June 2018  

Wonderful exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery of new work by Grayson Perry. OK I admit, like most of middle class England, I am a huge fan of Grayson Perry and this show didn’t disappoint. Just as the other show at the Serpentine was not about my tribe this one definitely was. The show looked at how we can widen the audience for art without dumbing down and what makes art and the idea of an artist popular. The first room did this most directly and I loved a vase called “Visitor Figures” which looked at the most popular exhibitions in recent times. I was pleased I’d been to quite a few but picking the list of the vase did make you think about how shows influence taste and thinking.   I loved the large woodcut “Reclining Artist” with a naked self-portrait with him surrounded by his possessions including piles of books. In the next room I loved “Death of a Working Hero” a tapestry in the style of a miners union using the funeral of a miner to represent the death of ...

Fantastic exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of work by Grayson Perry on the topic of identity. This is my favourite show of the year so far and I can’t spot anything on my to do list which might match it! It is based on his recent television series, which I am ashamed to admit I missed, in which he interviewed various people he felt might be typical of a group to try to determine what they felt they saw as their identity. I liked the fact the show starts with a work called “Map of Days” in which Perry looked at himself. It’s a large etching of a map with all the roads buildings etc given names of the emotions and ideas he had at the time. It was done over a period of time and he marks each day’s work as a date on the work. He is making the point that self is not a fixed thing just who we are at a moment in time and that can change. Next the trail round the first floor of the gallery takes you to a wonderful tapestry in the form of a bank note examining the B...

Fabulous discussion at Charleston Festival between Grayson Perry, looking stunning in neon pink with lime green platform shoes, and Justine Picardie, the editor of Harper’s Bazaar. Grayson Perry led the discussion with a wonderful series of slides and discussing his own clothes and the work of various designers. However Justine more than held her own and the ensuing conversation was wonderful. They were both quite rude about the current wave of exhibitions showing clothes as works of art. They also gave interesting examples of where fashion had used art in its design. The general conclusion was that fashion isn’t art but why would it want to be, it is a fascinating genre in its own right and should be admired as such not try to be something else.

Part of the Charleston Festival held at Charleston Farmhouse this talk combined Grayson Perry with the author of a new biography of Edward Burra, Jane Steveneson. This was a super event. Speculation had mounted amongst the audience as to whether Grayson would be in a dress and there was a gasp of delight when he appeared in a green romper suit complete with pink flowers. He was speaking about an exhibition he had curated in Redhill and promoting the catalogue. I’m not sure I’d really understood him before but as soon as he spoke I ‘got it’. He’s a big fairly beefy east ender who subverts what you might therefore think of him by the fact he wants to wear girls’ clothes and he subverts the idea of a man in girls’ clothes by being a fairly beefy east ender! I’m now a big fan! Jane Stevenson held her own on the stage as she was talking about a similarly individualistic artist, Edward Burra. Questions at the end brought the two themes together well and were not dominated by Grayson however...