Grayson Perry (British, b 1960)  100% ART  Fine bone china...

Hammer

£150

Grayson Perry (British, b 1960) 
100% ART 
Fine bone china plate with gold lustre
Developed for the Holburne Museum, in collaboration with Kit Grover.
Designed exclusively for the Holburne Museum in Grayson Perry’s inimitable style celebrates the exhibition The Pre-Therapy Years
21.5cm diameter (8.5")

Grayson Perry (British, b.1960), British potter who embedded in his work images of violence and other disturbing social issues.  Perry was born into a working-class family, and his interest in ceramics was kindled during childhood. By age 13 he had confided his transvestism to his diary. He studied at the Braintree College of Further Education in Essex and at Portsmouth Polytechnic in Hampshire, but it was not until the early 1980s, when he was living in a squatters’ community in London’s Camden Town, that he returned to the serious study of ceramics by way of evening art classes. At the time, he was appearing in performance pieces and art films and nursing his own aspirations as a filmmaker. He disliked the compromising and collaborating that he felt went hand in hand with filmmaking, however, and when in 1984 the first solo exhibition of his ceramic works—all created in his evening classes—sold well, he made pottery his main art form, though he continued to work in other media. From the 1990s Perry also worked in embroidery, creating such pieces as Mother of All Battles (1996), a woman’s folk costume stitched with ethnic symbols and images of weapons and killings, and Claire’s Coming Out Dress (2000). Perry was also the author of a novel, Cycle of Violence (1992).

Perry achieved celebrity status in 2003 when he won the Turner Prize, one of the art world’s premier honours. His receipt of the award stirred some controversy, not only because he was the first potter to win the prize but also because of his tendency to appear in public as a cross-dresser, frequently as his alter ego, Claire, and often accompanied by his wife and daughter. In 2004 Perry mounted a solo exhibition at the Tate St. Ives museum of modern and contemporary art in Cornwall. The exhibition featured his classically shaped vases, the colourful surfaces of which served as a seductive camouflage for inscribed images and messages that were distinctly at odds with their decorative medium. Domestic violence, child abuse, pedophilia, and cultural stereotypes were some of the troubling themes that the artist habitually explored in these inscriptions. Perry acknowledged his exploitation of the decorative appeal of his pots, describing them as a “guerrilla tactic” under the cover of which “a polemic or an ideology” waited to be discovered. I Want to Be an Artist (1996), the first of his vases to be sold at auction, fetched £36,000, more than twice the presale estimate.

Perry was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to contemporary art. In 2023 he was awarded a Knighthood (Knight Bachelor) for services to the Arts in the King’s New Year Honours.

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