Grayson Perry

I didn’t know much about Grayson Perry until I watched this documentary. It was fun to learn about this cross dressing potter from Essex who talks really honestly and also with a great sense of humour. He is mainly known for his fab pots but he also does tapestries and artwork too. His female alter ego is Claire. She wears clothes designed and made in fabrics created by Grayson and she often appears in his artwork .

Grayson had always had an ambition to show his own art “his own civilisation” (as he calls it) alongside the great civilisations of the world, but never dreamed the British Museum would agree to his proposal. He likes the British Museum – “it is full of special things”. He was granted access to the 8 million objects homed there. Over the course of 2 years he picked around 170 objects and things that really resonated with him, some of them being thousands of years old to a bear mascot from the 1980 Moscow Olympics and even a Stonehenge badge from 1983.

He then set about creating over 30 pieces of his own to go alongside these other objects and created a show called “The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsmen”. Grayson’s idea is that the show suggests a pilgrimage where you can marvel at the skill of all of these unknown craftsmen who created many beautiful things. Sometimes it’s hard to know what is Grayson’s work and what are original, which seems to really show the playful side of his work.

One of the recurring themes in lots of his work is his childhood teddy called Alan Measles! It’s like a “God” to him and he appears in lots of different forms. It’s like the exhibition is presided over by a mysterious God….Alan Measles. He appears on a tapestry and some of the pots.

In the entrance to the exhibition is a very ornate pink motorcycle which Grayson had custom built. It has a shrine on the back with a little throne that Alan Measles sits on. (His Father who left when he was 5 years old had the same AM1 motorbike). He actually took and rode the bike on his own pilgrimage to Germany. It’s really good fun and has a lot of detail and is not what you expect from a big motorcycle. He also wanted to make a tomb guardian, “Dark Alan”!!

There is also an old looking skull which Grayson made in 2008 which sits alongside really interesting objects like the Romanian Carnival Mask that looks contemporary, made with magazine cuttings and joke teeth.

There is also a fantastical tapestry on one of the walls which shows his usual playful side as well as featuring a detailed floor map of the British Museum.

The Rosetta Vase made for the exhibition “invites the viewer to decipher the meaning of the show” and pays homage to the Rosetta Stone (which is also in the museum) and helped unlock the secrets of Egyptian Hyroglyphics. Beautifully made with his trademark glaze and fun and provoking ideas.

The climax of the show is the actual tomb itself. He’d always wanted to make a ship, and decided on an arc, an arc of craftsmanship. He started (as he often does) in a sketch book, then made a quarter size model followed by a larger model in clay. He then had it cast in iron and finished constructing it on site. It is a tomb for all the craftsmen and “all the loveliness they made” – their legacy. It really is so detailed and has casts of lots of objects in the museum. The end of the pilgrimage.

I’m a fan of Grayson. He’s such a character and very talented. His pots are really good and I’ve watched a couple of youtube videos showing how he makes them. He doesn’t take himself too seriously and has a fun sense of humour. I would have loved to have gone to this exhibition. I’ll defo try and go and see his work in the future. Perhaps he might come up to Liverpool and do a talk!