Grayson Perry – The Most Popular Exhibition Ever

 The Most Popular Exhibition Ever:

 Part Four of Kitchen Table Writer's look at Art

I've been a fan of Perry's for a long time, probably since seeing a TV programme about the journey he took by motorcycle across Bavaria with his childhood bear Alan Measles. And then I listened to his Reithe  Lectures which were both anarchic and academic – a mixture of belly laughs and perfect truths.  So when my friend Liz asked me to accompany her to his retrospective exhibition, along with a bunch of Open College of the Arts students, I jumped at the chance. 

As soon as we arrived at the Arnolfini (Bristol's 'Tate Gallery'), I spotted the bike, a pink and pale blue Kennelworth called Patience; it was pride of place in the gallery with a backdrop of an Alpine scene. I loved the way Perry managed a huge number of themes and metaphors all in one go; travel, biking, masculitity, feminity, childhood memories (and long-lasting affection for teddy bears), cross-dressing, the strangeness of strangers, acceptance, humour, exploration and pushing boundaries. Now, as an exhibit, devoid of Perry in mauve leathers, and with only a photo of snowy mountains instead of the cold air and crunch of the real thing, the bike felt a bit out of context. Did that make it even more ‘a piece of artwork’ than when it was roaring along a Bavarian autobahm? I tried to visualise how people might have felt, standing outside their chalets and watching it appear on horizon, when it must have been more like the talking point of the week (year!), rather than an artwork.

We toured the exhibition slowly until lunch, each taking our separate ways. There were over 25 works in several rooms and corridors throughout the gallery, so it was sensible to zone in to the ones we felt drawn to. I started on the ground floor, which was dedicated to the idea ‘what is a man’, a concept Perry uses a lot in his work, and has written a book about, The Descent of Man, reviewed in October 2016 by the Guardian…https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/23/descent-of-man-masculinity-grayson-perry-review-a-mans-man-is-yesterdays-hero-gender-role  As Perry says…Maybe there is room for all kinds of masculinity, including tough guys, as long as everyone is kind to each other.

The major artwork downstairs was a massive woodcut, a self-portrait of Perry, lying back on a couch in his studio, surrounded by the paraphernalia of his work. He’s naked, but has given himself breasts, and assumed the sort of attitude taken by female artists’ models of

past centuries. In conventional art, the female naked form is so much more idealised than the male, which might echo the way the patriarchal societies across the world and down through centuries function, and I think this is part of what he was trying to say. This woodcut  remained my favourite piece, even after seeing all the exhibits. It spoke directly to me as a woman, but I like to think it can speak directly to men as well, suggesting ‘we are all androgynous’, although others might find a more aggressive message and some might be forced to look away. Perry said about this work, People seem as interested in me as in my work, so why not make a piece about that idea, that here I am, in my studio, in the nude or in a fantasy version of myself in the nude.  

I stood for a long time, looking into the woodcut, Animal Spirit, (you can view the artwork here) in which an aggressive 'horned and horny' bear stands over a naked baby in a wasted industrial landscape. Sometimes, what Perry says is a bit obvious, but the imagery here stopped me in my tracks. However, he uses words a lot, something I’ve never been sure of in his work because this is the obvious bit, too ‘readable’ by half, he’s almost telling you what to think. The bear’s guts are filled with abstract nouns, never the best of words if you’re aiming for metaphor…Sensible  Rational, Prudent…etc.

Brexit Ceramics, with thanks to
http://www.channel4.com/info/press/news/grayson-perry-reveals-his-brexit-pots-ahead-of-new-documentary

I like the ceramics, such as the two Brexit pots, one 2 % larger, one 2 % smaller. In a video viewable at the exhibition, Perry’s talked through his ideas behind this – to give visual voice to both sides of the argument by asking the general public to send in images of themselves…and the way they voted. “I thought it would be an interesting experiment to make a work that involved, to use the fashionable term, crowdsourcing via social media. The two pots have come out looking remarkably similar, which is a good result, for we all have much more in common than that which separates us”. Commonalities found on both pots, include: bacon and eggs, the local pub, walking the dog, family, David Bowie and Marmite. However, I’m wondering if these  images were successful in delivering the message he hoped. They did look awfully similar…does that mean we are all the same? Was that the message he intended? I don’t think so, but what I like about Perry’s art is that he doesn’t mind if what he might have said can’t be interpreted as he wanted it to be, but rather reinterpreted, again and again.

What I really loved was the way he'd address issues by representing a person as icon. To the left is his 'working-class boy'. I imagined a street gang member, stuck in his life and unable to see his way out of drinking, drugs and violence, was depicted by this  youth, peirced (with his own and other people's) sharp impliments, badges and beer bottle tops. 

At lunch in the querky Arnolfini cafe, we downloaded our thoughts. We talked about some students disappointment in discovering that he does not create his work 'from scratch'. For instance, he'll ask a potter to throw a ‘naked’ pot, rather than taking the clay and throwing a pot himself, then paint and transfer in his designs. He also sends his digital designs away to be made into a tapestry, rather than doing the weaving. I was surprised this was an issue with anyone, it didn’t worry me. I’m thinking that people might as well ask the painter to mix his paints from basic ingredients, as they did in Holland in the 17th Century, or for photographers to go back to film and developing…I know some do, and are, but that’s not the issue. The art isn’t in making two pots, 4% different in size. That’s a craft, and bit of science, perhaps. The art is in covering them with what you want to say about something. 

Liz had brought with her, an article by Adrian Searle about the exhibition  (https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/jun/06/grayson-perry-the-most-popular-art-exhibition-ever-review-the-court-jester-strikes-again) . Searle took exception to the title (The Most Popular Exhibition Ever), which he clearly did not, or could not, fully accept as ironic. Instead, his article berated most of the exhibits; the jokes become laboured and the Brexit Pots were better on TV…

I decided to put this to one side and make up my own mind.  Okay some of the imagery was not so appealing, and I have to admit that Searle had a slight point; I did prefer the pieces that made their point more subtlety.

I wasn’t initially so keen on Death of a Working Hero, (You can view this artwork here)
simply because the imagery he used wasn’t attractive to me, imagery associated with the banners of the trade union movement, and reminiscent even of the Orangemen marches in Belfast. These symbols are signifiers with strong and clear meanings but there are often deeply personal emotions reactions in people (as there was in me) which wouldn’t be expected by the artists, perhaps. I have no idea why I take against these symbols because it goes back to at least my teens. Maybe it goes back as far as the church and chapel banners of my childhood, although I have no distressing memories of any of these, I think I’ve always found them a little to ‘shouty’. For me, they also signified strongly, the boredom of being in church.

After lunch, we went round again, trying to spot the things we'd missed. I wanted to watch the people going round. The gallery was filled with families, okay, a lot of them were gallery-going families, but even so there were a huge amount of kids enjoying a Saturday outing – clearly in the week, the schools are coming too. Every age group seemed to be enlivened by the work, and by loving or hating, or not understanding, or by understanding by a process of osmosis – that moment when you take in an artwork and know you know something.

Our Mother

I wrote two poems, there and then, sitting on a bench in the gallery. The first is about Our Mother, which affected me deeply. She is doing what women all over the world do…holding on, and holding up, and this 'holding' is represented by everything she loves and cherishes and needs being attached to her bending body. Made of cast iron with string and cloth, she's a moving indictment of poverty. I feel it brought into life the images of stateless people worldwide, but wierdly the image also reminded me of a TV children's programme from the sixties, which included a quiz called Double or Drop:

DOUBLE OR DROP

So, what you had to do, 

Was step up and stand on the stool,

Say your name and where you came from,

Laugh when he made a joke, 

Answer when he fired a question.

So, when you got your question right, 

Meccano boxes and Dinky cars were pushed into your arms,

Dollies dangled from your fingers,

Toys and games for every right answer--

Cauliflowers and wooden spoons for every wrong one.

The pile growing, 

People laughing, 

Soon, you couldn’t see over the top.

So, the idea was, never to drop a prize.

But every time you got a question right, 

There was another thing, tumbled upon the others…

Exam success, qualifications, jobs,

Sex, boyfriends, parties,

Unaffordable fashion,
LIving in flats,

Wedding rings, mortgages, DIY,

Babies, children, families,

Holidays on credit

Until it was all impossible to hold!

So, what you couldn’t ever do, 

Was drop the baby.

I also tried a poem on a theme suggested by Liz, that we should try 'climbing into a ceramic vase. I climbed into The ‘Remainer’ vase of the Brexit pair.

RABBIT HOLES

She dreamed that she peered through the little door 

And saw a landscape filled with starry circles

And two people kissing like it was all the world

But she was too tall to get through the door

And there was no little cake to eat

Or potion to drink.

The white rabbit,

Marching down and down the vase,

Dangling his fob like a hypnotist,

Frightened her so much 

She ran past all the people with jaded faces and deadbolt eyes,

Past swallows and a woman holding a sad cat,

A guitar man, 

A box of nesting sparrows

And a falcon with a fierce stare.

When she landed at the bottom, all she found was an earthen pot.

It had all been a dream.