Sketchbooks

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This exhibition presents Grayson Perry’s largest single body of work to date, a series of tapestries entitled The Vanity of Small Differences. It’s a fascinating topic – one explored so beautifully by Perry in his series of six tapestries, The Vanity of Small Differences, which examine class and taste through large-scale, brightly coloured weavings. Research image for upper class depiction at Chavenage House The touring exhibition (19 September 2021–30 January 2022) developed by the Holburne Museum in Bath, is the first to celebrate Grayson Perry’s earliest forays into the art world and re-introduces the works he made between 1982 and 1994. Art is a process. It’s expressing yourself and doing something, and throwing yourself into it and getting better at it and trying again. That’s what it’s about. And people are responding to that now.' In this interview feature, Perry talks about Grayson's Art Club and subsequent exhibition. I think that – more than any other social factor, more than age, race, religion or sexuality – one’s social class determines one’s taste.’

The biggest ever exhibition of Sir Grayson Perry's work, covering his 40-year career. Perry has gone from taking pottery evening classes to winning the Turner Prize, presenting television programmes on Channel 4 and writing acclaimed books. Pottery allowed him the opportunity to indulge his fascination with sex, Punk, and counterculture, amongst other things, in the most unlikely and polite of artforms. Today he is one of Britain's most celebrated artists and cultural figures. Taking its cue from Ways of Seeing, John Berger's 1972 critical text on visual culture, this exhibition (2 June - 13 August 2017) explores the various formalistic strategies that artists employ to re-configure our perception of the world. I have explored how I can create my own letters in a playful way using cutting and collage. I can reflect upon what I like about the letters I have made. On Thursday 20 Jul 2017, 3.30 - 4.30pm, in the Serpentine Pavilion, Grayson Perry will be signing copies of the catalogue for his current Serpentine Galleries exhibition.Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! reviewed by Rachel Campbell-Johnston in The Times Preceding the close-up plates are some extracts from Perrys sketchbooks, showing preparatory notes and the charming, crudely drawn doodlings that went on to create the final characters, compositions and stories. The exhibition (14 September – 3 December 2017) tells the story of studio pottery in Britain, from the early twentieth century to the present.

The artist's first major solo exhibition (19 October 2018-3 February 2019) in France is divided into ten themed chapters that look at universal topics such as identity, gender, class, religion and sexuality. Now open at the Hayward Gallery – Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art, featuring Grayson Perry The exhibition (31 January–27 September 2020) crosses genres, media and timeframes to provide a playful and provocative framework for probing how Britain's literary and visual culture has perpetuated an idea of a utopian society that fosters nostalgic yearnings for a seemingly lost past.

03 Oct 2020 — 22 Feb 2021

I make the work I like. But a nice spinoff benefit of that is that I bring a kind of audience that isn’t necessarily solely into difficult, conceptualized 21st-century art." Grayson Perry talks about his work and his current Serpentine Galleries exhibition, The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! 7pm, Mon 24 July. Please note: this event is now sold out.

Curriculum Links Geography: Trade links, digital mapping, ordinance survey maps, detailed sketching of maps. History: Create maps inspired by your chosen ancient civilisation topic e.g. an Anglo Saxon settlement or village. Maths: Pictorial representations, 2D / 3D shapes. PSHE: Collaboration, Peer Discussion. English: Leaflets, posters Stephen Willats and Grayson Perry feature in Do I Have to Draw You a Picture? at Heong Gallery, Cambridge Time This pathway takes 6 weeks, with an hour per week. Shorten or lengthen the suggested pathway according to time and experience. Follow the stages in green for a shorter pathway or less complex journey. I have drawn my own letters using pen and pencil inspired by objects I have chosen around me. I can reflect upon why my letters have a meaning to me.

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The drawings in Sketchbooks chart the broadening of Perry's preoccupations from the purely personal to questions of class, gender, power and points in between, including the pomposity of the art world and the disquieting superficiality of Chris Huhne. There are preparatory diagrams for The Vanity of Small Differences, Perry's masterful series of tapestries depicting Britain's obsessive relationship with class and taste with Hogarthian relish. And designs for vases such as The Frivolous Now, a pot decorated with the specious terminology of modern life, such as "corporate spirituality", "hard working families" and "hen party Botox". I have seen how some artists use their typography skills and drawing skills to make maps which are personal to them. I have been able to reflect upon what I think their maps mean, what I like about them, and what interests me. The exhibition (now extended until 3 January 2021) is the first to survey works made by the artist between 1982 and 1994. These ground-breaking ‘lost’ pots have been reunited for the first time to focus on the formative years of one of Britain’s most recognisable artists.

The exhibition (16 June–7 October 2018) engages with themes of communication, breakdown of communication, and isolation. The artist's primary inspiration was A Rake's Progress (1732 -33) by William Hogarth, which in eight paintings tells the story of Tom Rakewell, a young man who inherits a fortune from his miserly father, spends it all on fashionable pursuits and gambling, marries for money, gambles away a second fortune, goes to debtors' prison and dies in a madhouse. The Vanity of Small Differences is a series of six large-scale tapestries by the Turner-Prize winning artist Grayson Perry.

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Grayson Perry All Man earns the artist best presenter and best arts programme prizes at the RTS awards. A small display (23 February – 3 June 2018) of photographs and spreads from one of Perry's early photo albums.