Grayson Perry is definitely an artist for our times and a champion for the mass media. I am looking forward to visiting the 2003 Turner Prize winner’s exhibition when I visit Bristol Art Gallery in the next few weeks to see The Art Club.

Tapestry and glazed pottery are Perry’s specialist media and both exude his challenge of our social norms and display his wonderful intellect. His exhibitions have graced the galleries of the world (it is here that I brag of seeing one of his shows in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney in 2016*)

My header choice this month is Expulsion from Number 8 Eden Close, which is one of six tapestries, entitled The Vanity of Small Differences he made in 2012. The series looks at taste, social behaviours and prejudices in Britain, the inspiration for which, Perry claimed, came from William Hogarth’s eighteenth century commentary, The Rakes Progress. The series was featured in the Channel 4 documentary of the same year, All in the best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry.

Grayson’s Art Club encourages artists of all walks of life to display their own work, using his exhibitions and television programme as a platform. In 2020 seventeen thousand artists submitted work. He says he “wants to encourage everyone to express their creativity through art. Art is good for you, whoever you are.” I have indeed submitted my own representative view of Sherborne Abbey!!

*My Pretty Little Art Career, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, New South Wales, 10th December 2015 – 1st May 2016.