Grayson Perry

Sir Grayson Perry (born 24 March 1960) is an English artist, writer, broadcaster, performer, drag act and singer. He is known for drag, ceramic vases and tapestries, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British "prejudices, fashions and foibles".

Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as Claire, his female alter ego, and Alan Measles, his childhood teddy bear, often appear. He has made a number of documentary television programmes

Perry has had solo exhibitions at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. In 2008 he was ranked number 32 in The Daily Telegraphs list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". In 2012, Perry was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork — the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover — to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life.

Early life Born in 1960 into a working-class family, Perry was four years old when his father Tom left home after discovering his mother Jean was having an affair with a milkman, whom she later married and whom Perry has claimed was violent. Subsequently, he spent an unhappy childhood moving between his parents and created a fantasy world based around his teddy bear to cope with his sense of anxiety. He considers a person's early experiences are important in shaping their aesthetics and sexuality. Perry described his first sexual experience at the age of seven when he tied himself up in his pyjamas.

Perry spent a short period of his school life at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford (KEGS). Following the encouragement of his art teacher, he decided to study art. He had an interest in film and exhibited his first piece of pottery at a New Contemporaries show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1980.

In the months following his graduation, he joined the Neo Naturists, a group started by Christine Binnie to revive the "true sixties spirit – which involves living one's life more or less naked and occasionally manifesting it into a performance for which the main theme is body paint". They put on events at galleries and other venues. At this time Perry was living in squats in central London.

When he left for Portsmouth in 1979, his stepfather told him "Don't come back". Perry was estranged from his mother; when she died in 2016, he did not attend her funeral.

Personal life As of 2010, he lives in north London with his wife, the author and psychotherapist Philippa Perry. They have one daughter, Florence, born in 1992.

In 2015 he was appointed to succeed Kwame Kwei-Armah as chancellor of University of the Arts London.

Perry is a keen mountain biker and motorcyclist.

Politics Perry is a supporter of the Labour Party and has designed works of art to raise funds for the party. In September 2015, Perry endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. Perry said he would back Corbyn as he was "doing something interesting for the political debate." He added: "I think he's gold." In October 2016, he said that Corbyn had "no chance of winning an election". In 2024 The Guardian reported that Perry had donated £180,000 to the party.

Cross-dressing From an early age he liked to dress in stereotypically women's clothes and "a fortysomething woman living in a Barratt home, the kind of woman who eats ready meals and can just about sew on a button". In his work, Perry includes pictures of himself in stereotypically women's clothes: for example, Mother of All Battles (1996) is a photograph of Claire holding a gun and wearing a dress, in ethnic Eastern European style, embroidered with images of war, exhibited at his 2002 Guerrilla Tactics show. One critic has called Perry "The social critic from hell".

Work

As well as pottery, Perry has worked in printmaking, drawing, embroidery and other textile work, film and performance. He has written a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence. Perry often works with media such as ceramics and weaving, which are traditionally considered to be lower down the hierarchy of arts than sculpture and painting.

Ceramics The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam mounted a solo exhibition of his work in 2002, Guerrilla Tactics. It was partly for this work that he was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003, the first time it was given to a ceramic artist.

Perry's work refers to several ceramic traditions, including Greek pottery and folk art. He has said, "I like the whole iconography of pottery. It hasn't got any big pretensions to being great public works of art, and no matter how brash a statement I make, on a pot it will always have certain humility ... or me the shape has to be classical invisible: then you've got a base that people can understand". His vessels are made by coiling, a traditional method. Most have a complex surface employing many techniques, including "glazing, incision, embossing, and the use of photographic transfers", which requires several firings. To some, he adds sprigs, little relief sculptures stuck to the surface.

Perry's 2012 TV documentary series All In The Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, about class "taste" variables, included him making large tapestries, called The Vanity of Small Differences. Their format was inspired by William Hogarth's A Rake's Progress. Of the tapestries, Perry says, The Vanity of Small Differences consists of six tapestries that tell the story of Tim Rakewell. Some of the characters, incidents and objects I have included I encountered whilst filming All in the Best Possible Taste. The tapestries tell a story of class mobility. I think nothing has such a strong influence on our aesthetic taste as the social class we grow up in.

The sketches were translated using Adobe Photoshop to design the finished images and the tapestries were woven on a computer-controlled loom.

A House for Essex ("Julie's House") (2012–2015) A House for Essex ("Julie's House"), a commission for Living Architecture. In 2015 the external work was completed on a holiday home in Wrabness, Essex, created by Perry working with Fashion Architecture Taste (FAT). Known as A House for Essex or Julie's House, it was built overlooking the River Stour, as a commission for the charity Living Architecture. The house encapsulates the story of Julie May Cope, a fictional Essex woman, "born in a flood-struck Canvey Island in 1953 and mown down last year by a curry delivery driver in Colchester".

Perry made a variety of artwork used inside the house, depicting Julie Cope's life. He made a series of large-scale tapestries, The Essex House Tapestries: The Life of Julie Cope, which include "A Perfect Match" (2015) and "In Its Familiarity, Golden" (2015), and for the bedrooms, "Julie and Rob" (2013) and "Julie and Dave" (2015). He also wrote an essay, "The Ballad of Julie Cope" (2015) and created a series of black and white woodcuts, Six Snapshots of Julie (2015). Perry also released the series in a signed colour edition of 68. The work was shown in an exhibition, Grayson Perry: The Life of Julie Cope, at Firstsite in Colchester, Essex, from January to February 2018.

Media Television In 2005, Perry presented a Channel 4 documentary, Why Men Wear Frocks, in which he examined transvestism and masculinity at the start of the 21st century. Perry talked about his own life as a transvestite and the effect it had on him and his family, frankly discussing its difficulties and pleasures. The documentary won a Royal Television Society award for best network production.

He was the subject of a The South Bank Show episode in 2006 and the subject of an Imagine documentary broadcast in November 2011.

His three-part series for Channel 4, All In The Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, was broadcast in June 2012. The series analysed the ideas of taste held by the different social classes of the UK. Perry explores both male and female culture in each social class and what they buy, in three parts: "Working Class Taste," "Middle Class Taste," and "Upper Class Taste." At the same time, he photographs, and then illustrates his experiences and the people, transcribing them into large tapestries, entitled The Vanity of Small Differences.

In 2014, Perry presented a three-part documentary series for Channel 4, Who Are You?, on identity. In it, he creates diverse portraits for the National Portrait Gallery, London, of ex-MP Chris Huhne, Rylan Clark-Neal from The X Factor, a Muslim convert, and a young transgender man.

In 2016, he presented a series exploring masculinity for Channel 4, Grayson Perry: All Man. The idea for the series came out of Perry's conversation with Chris Huhne in the previous series.

In 2018, Perry explored Rites of Passage in a four-part documentary series on Channel 4. The documentary series focused on death, marriage, birth, and coming of age as Perry compared the way people in the UK dealt with these themes compared to others around the world. Each episode culminated in Perry helping those in the UK to create ceremonies that were appropriate to their own situations.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Perry presented Grayson's Art Club from his home studio alongside his wife Philippa, encouraging viewers to produce and share their own artworks from lockdown. Along with pieces submitted by practising artists and celebrity guests, the public's work went on display at an exhibition in Manchester, however, this did not go ahead due to COVID-19 restrictions. The programme's second series began in February 2021.

In 2020 Channel 4 broadcast the series Grayson Perry's Big American Road Trip. Perry crossed the US on a motorbike, exploring its biggest fault lines, from race to class and identity. As America headed for a presidential election, Perry asked how its growing divisions could be overcome.

In 2025, Perry participated in the sixth series of The Masked Singer as "Kingfisher". He was eliminated in the sixth episode.

Aired in 2026 Perry starred in Grayson Perry Has Seen the Future, travelling to San Francisco and interviewing key players in the field of Artificial Intelligence. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/grayson-perry-has-seen-the-future/on-demand/77886-001

Other television and radio appearances also include the BBC's Question Time, HARDtalk, Desert Island Discs, Have I Got News for You, and QI.

Writing and lectures Perry was an arts correspondent for The Times, writing a weekly column until October 2007.

Perry gave the 2013 BBC Reith Lectures. In a series of talks titled Playing to the Gallery, he considered the state of art in the 21st century. The individual lectures, titled "Democracy Has Bad Taste", "Beating the Bounds", "Nice Rebellion, Welcome In!" and "I Found Myself in the Art World", were broadcast in October and November 2013 on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. He expanded the lectures into a book, Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to Be Understood (2014).

He guest edited an issue of New Statesman in 2014, entitled "The Great White Male Issue".

In 2017 Perry gave the inaugural Orwell Lecture in the North for The Orwell Foundation, entitled "I've read all the academic texts on empathy".

Judging In 2007 Perry curated an exhibition of art by prisoners and ex-offenders entitled Insider Art at the Institute of Contemporary Arts presented by the Koestler Trust, a charity that promotes art as rehabilitation in prisons, young offenders institutions and secure psychiatric units. He described the artworks as "raw and all the more powerful for that". In 2011 he returned to the annual Koestler Trust exhibition, this time held at London's Southbank Centre and judged the award winners in Art by Offenders with Will Self and Emma Bridgewater.

Stage musical

A stage musical based on the life of Perry called Grayson The Musical which has been in development since 2020, will hold some workshop performances at the Soho Theatre Walthamstow in July 2026. The musical features music by Richard Thomas, lyrics by Perry, book by Sara-Ella Ozbek and is directed by Sean Foley. thumb