Grayson Perry: 'The Vanity Of Small Differences' And 'New Art West Midlands' At BMAG

Grayson Perry, 'The Annunciation Of The Virgin Deal', Digital Tapestry, 2012, (Detail).

I seem to be pretty much living in art galleries at the moment, so it was no surprise to find myself walking into Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery yet again, the other day.  This time I even got paid, as I was accompanying a group of GCSE students, from the school where I work, on their trip to view the exhibition, ‘Photorealism: Fifty Years of Hyperrealistic Painting’.  I’d already spent some time with that show, (and reported on it here, at some length), so stationed myself near the nearest main exit as ‘back stop’, for the first part of the visit.  However, once the students emerged to explore the rest of the building, I got the chance to take in a couple of other attractions at the same time.

Grayson Perry:  ‘The Vanity Of Small Differences’.

Grayson Perry, 'The Adoration Of The Cage Fighters', Digital Tapestry, 2012

Many people in Britain will have seen Perry’s entertaining TV programmes about the mores of taste within the British class system [1.].  If the subject seems like an easy target, it should be remembered that class-consciousness still casts a massive shadow over British life, and Perry deals with the matter entertainingly but without condescension, generally.  He is indeed a regular and amiable presence in the British media, and I’ve already discussed his delivery of the '2013 BBC Reith Lectures'. It might be easy to dismiss him as a Media luvvy, but he is, above all, a working artist with a recognisable sociological agenda, as well as an obvious mission to communicate.  His cheerful, public embrace of a somewhat unusual brand of transvestism, (even by normal cross-dressing standards), is both psychologically revealing, and evidence that his fascination with the intricacies of social display goes beyond the merely voyeuristic.

Grayson Perry Dresses Up For A Night Out With The Girls In Sunderland.

This show provided an opportunity to view the six large-scale tapestries that Perry designed as the culmination of his project, alongside the TV shows and evidence of the research and development phases that support it all.  The three broadcasts each dealt with one of the traditional class divisions within British society, Working, (a label possibly now in need of reinterpretation), Middle, and Upper, (be it old aristocracy or new money,), but that model is, as Perry points out, too rigid and simplistic a way to view the matter in reality.  Instead, taking Hogarth’s 'Rake’s Progress’ as his inspiration, (and transforming the original protagonist, Tom, into his own Tim Rakewell), he depicts our hero’s progress through the competing tribes and shifting strata of British society and the complex distinctions and contradictions that characterise them.

Grayson Perry, 'The Agony In The Car Park', Digital Tapestry, 2012, (Detail Below).

Perry posits Tim as a bright, Working Class lad from Sunderland who, through diligence, education and aspiration, achieves success and wealth as a software tycoon.  He eventually acquires the trappings of a quasi-aristocratic lifestyle but ultimately crashes his Ferrarri, to die in a street in the homogenised, media-fixated, (and supposedly classless?) landscape we all increasingly inhabit.  If the six finished pieces could be said to fit nominally into the three basic social groupings, they also demonstrate how it is through their overlaps, and the subtle nuances within each, that the true story of contemporary social taste and expectations lie.  This is most fully appreciated whenever aspiration is given free rein or some degree of social mobility is achieved.  Borrowed from Freud [2.], ‘The Vanity Of Small Differences’ proves an apt title indeed.

Grayson Perry, 'Expulsion From Number 8 Eden Close', Digital Tapestry, 2012

Grayson Perry, 'The Annunciation Of The Virgin Deal', Digital Tapestry, 2012

There is far too much content in the six tapestries to start listing their subject matter in detail.  However, I would mention the messianic Social Club singer; complete with crucifix-like shipyard crane, meat raffle and car park boy racers, from ‘The Agony In The Car Park’, as particularly memorable.  Its sense of guileless sentimentality and tribal communality suggest that traditional Working Class ties are as deeply rooted and proudly felt as any.  I’m also rather taken with the setting for Tim’s demise in ‘♯ Lamentation’, with its petrol station, McDonalds and retail park.  It seems ironic that having climbed so high, Tim should be brought back to earth amongst the signifiers of Global Capitalism, (paradoxically, a great leveler of taste, - even as it magnifies inequality).  To close one’s eyes for the last time on such sights seems almost too cruel.

Grayson Perry, 'The Annunciation Of The Virgin Deal', Digital Tapestry, 2012, (Detail).

I think it’s fair to say that the various elements of the project, including the research phase, (or ‘Taste Safari’), the broadcasts, and the finished tapestries themselves, all play an equally important role in the overall project, demonstrating the importance of working across various platforms for many artists today.  It might also be argued that the different stages involved actually reflect the content rather cleverly.  TV is still often regarded as passive entertainment to distract the lower classes.  Research and study, (including an extensive process of drawing), might represent the process of achievement and betterment through learning and hard work.  The Tapestry is itself a traditional status symbol of the Wealthy, once being immensely expensive and labour intensive to produce, but also redolent of the elegant decay with which we might associate old aristocracy.

Grayson Perry, 'The Working Class At Bay', Digital Tapestry, 2012, (Detail Below).

Perry’s use of modern CAD/CAM techniques to realise his final pieces adds another interesting layer of context, both in further investigating the relationship between traditional craft and contemporary art, prevalent in all his work, and in symbolising how digital technology has become a significant driver of 21st Century social mobility, and transmitter of social mores.  Whilst still not cheap to produce, most of the labour and time in a digital tapestry is now spent preparing the digital files, with all that implies about artisanal status.

Grayson Perry, ‘♯ Lamentation’, Digital Tapestry, 2012

I’m impressed by the way Perry pulled off his complex compositions, packed with wonderfully observed details and clues.  If some of these seem stereotypical at first glance, it should be remembered that he observed everything first hand, during his research trips to Sunderland, Kent and The Cotswolds.  Are such clichés, clichés for a reason, or just inherently self-perpetuating?  I can also appreciate the way he has incorporated various art historical and quasi-religious visual quotations from Renaissance paintings into his composite images.  Perry wryly points out that this is a deeply Middle Class thing to do, whilst illuminating how the construction of a class-based taste identity is as much an act of faith as the religious frameworks within which all social assumptions once operated.

Grayson Perry, '‘♯ Lamentation’, Digital Tapestry, 2012, (Detail).

The concerns and modes of Grayson Perry’s work are a world away from my own, and his ‘not-really-naïve’, cartoonish, figurative style and narrative approach are unlike anything I have attempted myself, or am ever likely to.  Nonetheless, I do find his work both engaging and thought provoking.  Above all, there’s a lot of fun to be had from viewing our tribal eccentricities in his tapestries, just as there was in viewing his TV shows.

Grayson Perry, 'The Vanity Of Small Differences', continues until 11 May 2014 at: Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3DH.

‘New Art West Midlands.’

‘New Art West Midlands’ is a group show of work by a selection of recent graduates from Birmingham City, Coventry, Staffordshire, Wolverhampton and Worcester Universities.  It is actually part of a programme of exhibitions spread around a number of regional galleries, and it would take quite an effort to get round the whole thing, I suspect.  I may try to visit more of it at some point but, for now, had to be satisfied with a brief scan of the work on show at BMAG.  Such shows are inevitably a mixed bag and I didn’t have time to really find out what was going on with a lot of the work in depth.  However, two artists did stand out as being of real interest at first glance.  Both are painters, which says something about the power of immediate visual arrest characteristic of the medium, I suppose.

Santhanha Nguyen:  Nguyen is a skateboarder who uses her chosen means of transport to explore abandoned or out-of-bounds urban spaces.  Her painting ‘13’ (2012), appears rather traditional in its loose(ish) handling, veils of fluid oil paint and earthy palette; which is actually refreshing as an alternative to the predictable post-punk or wild style tropes usually associated with that scene.  It depicts the abandoned top deck of a multi-story car park, closed under H&S regulations (!) after becoming a favourite suicide venue.

Santhanha Nguyen, '13', Acrylic On Board, 2012

To be honest, much of the interest in the piece may lay in that knowledge, but Nguyen does convey something of the detached desolation of the location, predominantly by building her composition around a wide expanse of nothing very much.  She claims Casper David Freidrich as an influence, but I was also reminded of George Shaw’s ‘Back Of The Club 2’ (2001), which also dares to focus its attention on bleak architecture and a tract of empty tarmac.

George Shaw, 'Back Of The Club 2', Humbrol Enamel On Panel, 2001

Nguyen’s art practice, and her involvement with skateboarding, clearly overlaps with the concerns of other subcultures such as Urban Exploration and Parcour.  All attempt in some way to redefine our relationship with urban spaces and to interrogate the systems of power and access control applying to them.  I am also reminded of the recent dispute between the skateboarders of London’s South Bank cultural complex, and the architects and planners keen to clean up the organic, unofficial aspects of its terrain in favour of yet more bland ‘retail opportunities’.

James Birkin:  The influence of George Shaw seems even more overt in the painting of James Birkin.  He also derives subject matter from apparently mundane locations in Coventry, and I was immediately drawn to his depictions of the city’s disused ‘Mustard’ nightclub.  In ‘Seating Booth’, ‘Office’ and ‘First Floor’, (all 2013), he employs a slightly naïve brand of Photorealism to depict the desolation, and squalor of the club’s abandoned interior spaces, focusing particularly on the tawdry décor, superficial damage, and the accumulations of detritus that lend the place a Marie-Celestine quality.

James Birkin, 'Office', Acrylic On Canvas, 2013

Birkin works from flash photography and does manage to evoke the strange, artificial objectivity of such illumination in his paintings.  There’s something affecting about the shabby incongruity of such nocturnal leisure zones viewed under functional white light, and his chosen method pushes this even further.  In fact, paradoxically, the apparent prioritisation of factual investigation over subjectivity, creates a particular set of atmospherics all of its own.

James Birkin, 'Seating Booth', Acrylic On Panel, 2013

These slightly wonky attempts to faithfully describe the subjects’ complex detail reminded me of Shaw’s own faltering early attempts to master Photorealist methods.  I wonder if this is a conscious strategy or simply indicates a young painter still striving to refine his chosen style, and also, if it would be going too far to see signs of a nascent ‘Coventry School’ emerging in Shaw’s wake?  I had paused to view one of the latter’s refined mature works, just the previous day, at Cov’s Herbert Gallery, and noticed the garish exterior of ‘Mustard’ on returning to the car.  That, and the presence of the ‘Photorealism’ show, downstairs at BMAG, makes me reflect that, often, the more you see, the more things connect up.

'New Art West Midlands' continues until 18 May 2014 at: Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham, B3 3DH.  Also at other regional galleries, (dates vary).

[1.]:  Grayson Perry, ‘All In The Best Possible Taste’, Channel 4 Television.  Three Episodes.  First Broadcast: 05 June, 12 June, 19 June 2012.

[2.]:  “The phenomenon that it is precisely communities with adjoining territories, and related to each other in other ways as well, who are engaged in constant feuds and ridiculing each other.”  From:  Sigmund Freud, ‘Freud Library Vol.12: Civilisation Society And Religion, Group Psychology, Civilisation & Its Discontents, And Other Works’, London, Penguin, 1987.