Since winning the Turner Prize in 2003, the celebrated transvestite potter Grayson Perry (born 1960) has become something of a national institution in the U.K. In 1992, some while before he became known, Atlas Press published Perry’s sole graphic novel, Cycle of Violence, the nightmarish tale of a young cyclist and transvestite, now reprinted in a handsome hardcover edition. Of the work’s genesis, Perry wrote: “When I was 12 or 13 I drew a series of short comic strip adventures featuring an idealized male hero. When puberty hit me those boys’ own tales became increasingly kinky, involving much cross-dressing and bondage. Sadly these reports from my young subconscious were lost in the upheavals of adolescence. Twenty years later I drew Cycles of Violence while facing up to becoming a father myself, and once again my imagination became an open wound.”
Published by Hayward Gallery Publishing. Text by Suzanne Moore, Grayson Perry. Foreword by Caroline Douglas, Adam Lowe.
Telling a story of class and taste, aspiration and identity, the tapestry series The Vanity of Small Differences by Turner Prize–winning artist Grayson Perry (born 1960) was conceived up and down the length and breadth of the U.K., as Perry traveled for Channel 4 television “on safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain.” The result is a monumental exploration of the “emotional investment we make in the things we choose to live with, wear, eat, read or drive.” The six vibrant and highly detailed tapestries presented here bear the influence both of early Renaissance painting and of William Hogarth’s “modern moral subjects,” literally weaving characters, incidents and objects from Perry’s research into a modern-day version of Hogarth’s famous A Rake’s Progress. This book is an essential companion to one of the key contemporary art works of the last decade.
Published by Hayward Gallery Publishing. Text by Grayson Perry, Blake Morrison.
For more than a year, the British transvestite potter Grayson Perry trawled the British Arts Council Collections holdings to present an alternative view of British art--one that reassesses the relationship between past and present and dissolves the boundaries between the radical, the conservative and the radically conservative. Unsurprisingly for an artist who has always positioned himself on the margins of the art world, Perry has found himself drawn to work that precedes the recent chic of British art, work that conveys a sense of tradition and modest accomplishment. Routine assessments of postwar British art tend to pursue familiar trajectories, but Unpopular Culture seeks an alternative, one that moves away from dates and movements towards a more subtle investigation of the preoccupations that permeate the British art ofthis period.
Published by nai010 publishers/Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. Edited by Marjan Boot. Essays by Louisa Buck and Andrew Wilson. Foreword by Rudi Fuchs.
Flying in the face of the good taste so amply displayed in the "little world of ceramics" that he detests, Grayson Perry's pots are shocking and thematically controversial. With their scratched-in surfaces that feature colored images ranging from quintessentially English floral patterns to transvestities to sexual and violent scenes, Perry's work tackles guilt and innocence, perversion and hypocrisy, aggression and violence, sexuality and gender--a far cry from the subject matters usually dealt with in the British arts and crafts world. Presented in the format of an album, this monograph offers intriguing insight into the world that Grayson creates in drawings, embroidery, photography, and, most especially, ceramic pots.
Grayson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences
Unpopular Culture: Grayson Perry Selects from The Arts Council Collection
Grayson Perry