A Morning with Grayson Perry

On Tuesday morning, a small group of Year 12 students had the opportunity to attend a talk given by English artist and winner of the 2003 Turner Prize, Grayson Perry, hosted by Fortismere school. Perry (dressed rather demurely in motorbike-friendly conventional male attire) engaged the audience as he began the talk by discussing the key components of being a successful artist in today’s world and how the attention gained through the media in response to his vibrant work, fashion sense and personality has been extremely beneficial to his career. He then went on to talk about the development of his life as an artist from attending weekly pottery classes to making a rather bizarre pilgrimage through Germany in honour of his childhood teddy bear on his custom-made shrine motorbike (he had several audience members, including myself, in fits of laughter while recounting this tale). Listening to Perry's description of his approach to art, we found that the process of “mucking about and having fun” (and, in his case, with “a beer in front of X-Factor”) plays an extremely important part in the creation of Perry's works, which range from his “House for Essex” as featured on TV to his six large-scale tapestries “The Vanity of Small Differences”. He spoke in a philosophical way about the illusion that we are all individuals but that, in his experience, we are all “more alike than we are different”, and that this is a great thing. He concluded that we are made by society and a big part of our identity as artists is to embrace and display it, so that others can acknowledge it; an important message which particularly struck many members of the audience. We would like to thank Ms Gilson for accompanying us on what was certainly a very enriching, entertaining and thought-provoking trip.