Graysonperrymakingmeaning

Grayson Perry Making Meaning

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Making Meaning Jenny Uglow

Grayson Perry always carries a sketchbook, filled with doodles and drawings – ideas for pots, dresses, things that make him laugh, take him by surprise. Looking back, he traces his delight and sense of commitment to his grandmother’s gift of a little stack of very cheap notebooks: ‘I treasured them and filled them with diagrams of fantasy aircraft and plans of racing cars, adventure comics and war scenes.

What I enjoyed was the density of the little tomes, the way I could fill each page with detail. My dedication made them precious, and this feeling has never left me.’ The sketchbooks are a witness to the sheer fun of drawing, they contain ‘an archive of daft notions that later become art’. As these explorations take on shape, they acquire meaning, and become art.

Making Meaning charts the different directions that the route from idea to sketch to object has taken in Perry’s work over the past decade, via maps and pots, sculpture and tapestries, etchings and embroidery.

The puzzles they contain are part of the fun, a sly answer to all those who stand in front of a work of modern art and say, ‘But what does it mean?’

Everything we make has meaning, learned through experience.

A woolly hat means warmth, a glass or mug or bottle means we can drink, a chair means we can sit down – unless it is roped off in a stately home. But meaning outstrips function: a chair can be a throne or a drunk’s bench, a cup can be a desperate plea from a refugee in a desert or a mug with a smug message. Perry shows us, too, how objects are hallowed by sentiment or tarnished by fear, like the bundle carried by the wise, skinny, Asian figure of Our Father (2007) on his mysterious trek – ‘the original pilgrim’, Perry calls him. Finding meaning is a journey; even going to an exhibition can be seen as a ‘cultural pilgrimage’, although Perry’s inclusive approach makes it more an exuberant than reverent voyage of discovery. In this show, many of the exhibits are about travels, walks, arrivals. Our starting point is the pot You Are Here (2011), whose speech bubbles immediately dispel tension about possible motives for coming. ‘There was such a buzz about it on Twitter’, ‘It’s on my A Level Syllabus, my tutor told me to come’, ‘I had a free ticket’, ‘I came to be outraged’, or, best of all, ‘I just wanted to satisfy myself that I am more clever than this celebrity charlatan’. One shabby-looking soul admits ‘I just wandered in’. And that’s the point – to wander, to wonder, to be open.

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Catalogue of works

‘A self-portrait as a fortified town, the wall is perhaps my skin. Each day I worked on it I finished by marking the point with the date to highlight the passage of time in the production of art to reflect the forming and reforming of one’s identity. The “self” I think is not a single fixed thing but a lifelong shifting performance. In the centre is an open space; there is no pearl, no central core; our “selves” are but shifting layers of experience. My “sense of self” is a tiny man kicking a can down the road.’

A Map of Days, 2013 Etching from four plates 119.5 × 161 cm · 47⅛ × 63⅜ in Edition of 68

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‘This work is inspired by historic Asafo flags (of now modern-day Ghana) which usually depict proverbs or are visual jibes at rival military companies. The freshness of these flags compared to the pageantry of Britain makes me think that ritual can become stultified if not kept relevant to its time and context. In my flag, on the left is Alan Measles, the guru of doubt, doling out sensible advice to other religions.’

Hold Your Beliefs Lightly, 2011 Computerised embroidery on cotton and silk 32.5 × 45 cm · 12¾ × 17¾ in Edition of 250

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Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry was born in Chelmsford, Essex in 1960, and lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions by the artist include Arnolfini, Bristol (2017); Serpentine Gallery, London (2017); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum, Aarhus (2016); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2016); Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2015); and Turner Contemporary, Margate (2015). In 2011, the British Museum opened The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, a critically acclaimed show in which Perry combined his own works with historical artefacts chosen from the British Museum collection. Other institutional solo exhibitions include the Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg (2008); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa (2007); Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2006); Barbican Art Gallery, London (2002); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002).

The Vanity of Small Differences, Perry’s monumental suite of tapestries exploring the subject of taste in contemporary Britain, was first shown at Victoria Miro, London in 2012; it was acquired by the Arts Council Collection and the British Council Collection and subsequently toured throughout the UK and Europe. The making of the tapestries was chronicled in the first of Perry’s Channel 4 television series, All in the Best Possible Taste (2012), a BAFTA Specialist Factual winner. Perry’s second BAFTA-winning television series Who Are You?, about identity, was broadcast in 2014, accompanied by a solo presentation of works at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

The series All Man, which considered masculinity, followed in 2016, with the related book, The Descent of Man, published by Allen Lane. Perry delivered the Reith Lectures, BBC Radio 4’s annual flagship lecture series, in 2013; his ensuing book Playing to the Gallery is published by Penguin. A House for Essex, a permanent building designed by the artist in collaboration with FAT Architecture, was constructed in the North Essex countryside in 2015.

Work by the artist is held in museum collections worldwide, including, among others, the British Museum, London; Tate Collection, London; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven.

Winner of the 2003 Turner Prize, Perry was elected a Royal Academician in 2012 and received a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List in 2013. In 2015, he was appointed both Trustee of the British Museum and Chancellor of the University of the Arts London, and he received a RIBA Honorary Fellowship in 2016.

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First published in 2018 by Windsor Press 3125 Windsor Boulevard Vero Beach FL 32963 and the Royal Academy of Arts Burlington House Piccadilly London W1J 0BD On the occasion of the exhibition Grayson Perry: Making Meaning 15 January – 27 April 2018 The Gallery at Windsor 3125 Windsor Boulevard Vero Beach FL 32963 www.windsorflorida.com/gallery All images © Grayson Perry, 2018.

Courtesy of Victoria Miro, London/Venice except A Map of Days, Map of an Englishman, Comfort Blanket and The Walthamstow Tapestry, which are courtesy of Paragon | Contemporary Editions Ltd and Victoria Miro, London/Venice All photography by Stephen White, except p.16 © Richard Ansett, 2016; pp.22, 51 by Stephen Brayne; p.66 by Steve Russell; p.70 © Thierry Bal, 2017 ‘Making Meaning’ © Jenny Uglow, 2018 ‘Grayson Perry in conversation with Tim Marlow’ ©Tim Marlow and Grayson Perry CBE RA, 2018

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any other information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-910350-96-6 Distributed outside the United States and Canada

by ACC Publishing Group, Sandy Lane, Old Martlesham, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 4SD Acknowledgements Grayson Perry CBE RA The Gallery at Windsor Creative Director: The Hon. Hilary M. Weston Art Gallery Manager: Laura Kelley Marketing Director: Jane Smalley Private Secretary to the Hon. Hilary M. Weston: Louise Larlee Royal Academy of Arts, London Series Curators: Christopher Le Brun PRA and Tim Marlow, Artistic Director Elena Davidson Susie Gault Joseph Green Beth Schneider

Quoted text on pp.42, 50, 52, 54 and 62 sourced from Jacky Klein, Grayson Perry, Thames and Hudson, London, rev. ed., 2013

Victoria Miro, London/Venice Exhibition Curator: Erin Manns, Director of Exhibitions Oliver Miro Victoria Miro Simona Pizzi Kathy Stephenson Hannah van den Wijngaard Valeska Wittig Glenn Scott Wright

Quoted text on p.52 sourced from Grayson Perry, The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, British Museum, London, 2011

Paragon | Contemporary Editions Charles Booth-Clibborn Florian Simm

A Map of Days, Comfort Blanket, The Walthamstow Tapestry and Map of an Englishman are all published by Paragon | Contemporary Editions, London

Lenders to the exhibition Charles Booth-Clibborn Fontene Demoulas and Tom Coté Tristin Mannion Lillian and Billy Mauer Victoria Miro, London/Venice Paragon | Contemporary Editions Grayson Perry The Royal Academy of Arts Nicky Sargent and those who wish to remain anonymous

For the book in this form copyright © Windsor Press and the Royal Academy of Arts, 2018

The Island of Bad Art is published by the Royal Academy of Arts Hold Your Beliefs Lightly is published by Victoria Miro, London/Venice For the book in this form © Windsor Press and Royal Academy of Arts, 2018 Any copy of this book issued by the publisher is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including these words being imposed on a subsequent purchaser.

Project management: Nicola Togneri Copy editing: Dorothy Feaver Designed by Mark Thomson Set in Gerstner Programm Printed in Belgium by die Keure in an edition of 2,000 copies