ME & GRAYSON!

I like Grayson Perry.

I like his art.

I like the way he talks about art. He makes it really accessible to someone like me (whose Art A-Level expired sometime last century).

I’ve just been to see his show, Delusions of Grandeur, at the Wallace Collection, where I spent as much time in the shop buying his art (if tea-towels, mugs and key-rings can be called art) as I did in the show. I bought a couple of beautiful mugs, and - after much careful thought and deliberation - another mug to drink tea out of.

TBH I’m a bit more about the, “Wow! Look at those colours!” than the paying-attention-bit, but the time and craftsmanship lavished on concocting the fake histories that underpin the whole thing really is gobsmacking.

Personal highlights include: a painted plate version of ‘The Laughing Cavalier’ which, unlike the real ‘Laughing Cavalier’, made me chortle as soon as I saw it; Saint Millicent Upon Her Beast - I don't know why I liked it, I just did. It was (to put it in more poncy terms) both sophisticated and childlike at the same time.

And, Grayson’s new show really got me thinking: “Hang on, where have I seen this before?”

Not to say he’s not original, I love his stuff - I think he’s one of the best there is.

But…

The exhibition includes; woven carpets, printed wallpaper and sculptural objects cast in bronze, a custom-made bed with an intricately carved headboard and a hand-sewn decorative bedspread, artistically conceived furniture hand-crafted by artisans, alongside painstakingly-designed and gorgeously elaborate costumes.

Portraits of imaginary ancestors are up on the walls, all the population of Grayson and ‘Sarah’s’ imaginary worlds.

Now…

Come with me on a little mood journey, back to my 30’s and a young M. Denton Esq., buying his first little (basement) flat.

My idea of interior design was to fill it… with portraits of fictional ancestral ‘Dentons’: characters in history who have all played an (infamous) role in predecessing me.

I added to that an imaginary inheritance of woven carpets, ancestral portraits, printed wallpaper and sculptural objects cast in bronze, a custom-made bed with an intricately carved headboard and a hand-sewn decorative bedspread, artistically conceived furniture hand-crafted by artisans… not to mention my vast collection of painstakingly-designed and gorgeously elaborate clothes, fit for a cartoon ‘posh’ bloke…

I called it my "Cartoon Stately Home”.

I knew it wasn’t totally ‘normal’ to design everything in your environment, from the carpets to the labels on my tinned beans, but I chalked it up to my being a bit odd.

In hindsight, I think there was other writing on the wall…

On the wall, like my fictitious sixteenth cousin, Incapability Denton: a landscape gardener, as notorious for stuffing his pooch as he is for his untimely death; falling into a horse-drawn-rotary-lawn-mower (the latest in gardening technology at the time).

On the wall like these imagined ancestors and their hypothetical histories…

Hang on. Wait. Is it just me or have I got a lot in common with Sir Grayson Perry?

What if I’ve been an artist all along, like Grayson has… but I just didn’t realise it?

Hm.

It has taken me many years to believe that I could be an Artist with a capital ‘A’. A proper ART Artist like what I think Grayson is.

It’s funny, cos he was the Royal Academy’s curator-in-residence when I had my first two pieces chosen for the Summer Exhibition, and one of them went on to do pretty well; it was featured on the BBC, went on the walls of big galleries and then over mantelpieces everywhere (much to my shock at the time).

I’ve since had a piece in last year’s RA show, and this year’s. All that has made me feel quite close to the art world, and grateful to Grayson for his faith in me.

Delusions of Grandeur made me feel differently about a lot of things. The Wallace Collection for one: as I stepped out into a world of chainmail, swords, paintings and Rococo furniture I saw them all through Grayson’s eyes.

But it mainly had me feeling differently about myself.

I’m reflecting on old work in a new way.

I feel a kinship with Grayson, and other artists like him, and that makes me want to make more art and pursue my dreams! I loved the fantasy elements of the show; I’ve been living in a strange and unusual world of my own creation my whole life! I got out of the show and immediately booked myself onto a rug tufting course which was previously at the back of my agenda! finally, learning the crafts I want to learn is front and centre. What a result!

As he was busy for two-and-a-bit years, making the exhibition, Perry says that he was constantly asking himself: “If I do this like this, will the visitor have gotten their money’s worth?”

Grayson, I really, really did.

MDEsq x.

CREDITS

Portraits of Mark's ancestors - Malcom Venville

Sculpted ancestors, bronze lions etcetera - a famous artist (who we can't mention)

All of Grayson Perry's stuff - Grayson Perry