Grayson Perry b.1960

Grayson Perry CBE RA is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster. He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries[1] and cross dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British “prejudices, fashions and foibles”.
Perry’s vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as “Claire”, his female alter-ego, and “Alan Measles”, his childhood teddy bear, often appear.

He has made a number of documentary television programmes and has curated exhibitions. He has published two autobiographies, Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (2007) and The Descent of Man (2016), written and illustrated a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence (2012), written a book about art, Playing to the Gallery (2014), and published his illustrated Sketchbooks (2016). Various books describing his work have been published. In 2013 he delivered the BBC Reith Lectures.

Perry has had solo exhibitions at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Barbican Centre, the British Museum and the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Arnolfini in Bristol, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.[8] His work is held in the permanent collections of the British Council and Arts Council, Crafts Council, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Perry was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003.... read more

Grayson Perry Prints

Grayson Perry: Six Snapshots of Julie, 2015

Grayson Perry

Six Snapshots of Julie, 2015
A series of 6 woodcuts with lithographic underlays printed on 185 gsm Aquarelle Arches Satin Paper
72.5 x 48.5 cm.
Signed by the artist and numbered on the reverse
Edition of 68
£17,500

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I made six prints, one for each decade of Julie’s life. The first one shows her as a young girl on Canvey Island, as it might have looked in the 1950s, with flimsy bungalows, telegraph poles and the refinery belching smoke in the distance. The second is her in a council estate in Basildon, a sexy young rock chick in her hot pants and boots, leaning on a motorbike – a premonition of her own death, perhaps. In the third scene, she’s a young mother picnicking with her two kids in the park. That’s my favourite image, because it captures the poignant trapped feeling of that situation. She was still in her relationship with Dave at the time, but there’s a row of houses in the background and it’s all a bit Larkinesque; I was very much trying to pick up on the atmosphere in Larkin’s poem ‘Afternoon’ where he talks about the young parents in the park: ‘Before them, the wind / Is ruining their courting-places […] Something is pushing them / To the side of their own lives.’
The fourth image shows Julie with one of her workmates, out on the piss. It’s like a photo-booth portrait of them from the time she’s working as a social worker. The fifth print is a picture of her second wedding. Julie’s got flowers in her hair, and both she and Rob are looking a bit dumpy and middle-aged by now. The final picture is her in front of the Taj Mahal, on one of their trips. When Rob finds that photo after her death, he remembers how he’d promised her that ‘if she died / He would then grieve as deep as Shah Jahan / And build a Taj Mahal upon the Stour’ – a promise which ends in this house being built as her shrine.
I used a set of these prints in black and white as wallpaper on the ceiling of the main room in the house. They are made from blocks cut by a computer-controlled router: they were the first woodcut prints I’ve ever made and I really like the effect of them.

Grayson Perry

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Grayson Perry b.1960

Grayson Perry Prints

Grayson Perry

Additional information

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