Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!
Grayson Perry is one of Britain’s most celebrated artists. The Turner Prize winner is known for his sculpture, ceramics, tapestries and quilt-work, as well as his feminine alter-ego Claire.
His practice has long been concerned with what you might call the fabric of society. His current preoccupation with the way we consume art and the ways in which contemporary art can best address a diverse cross section of society is at the heart of his mantra.
And there is no escaping it in his newest body of work, opening at the Serpentine Galleries on election day.
With a desire to challenge “the same old comfortable ideas” which, in Perry's view, dominates British society and culture, we pick the works which are now more pertinent than ever.
The Digmoor Tapestry, inspired by Perry's experience of filming a three-part series exploring masculinity for Chanel 4 last year among Lancashire youth gangs, is a cartographical representation of the disenchanted sub-culture in Britain's poorest suburbs.
In this work, Perry overlays a map of a local estate with lottery tickets, smouldering joints, a pool of blood (symbolic of the murder of little Kev), and phallic graffiti that appears aerosolled, but has in fact been woven into the surface.