Grayson Perry: The Vanity of Small Differences: The Vanity of Small Differences (reprinted)

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In 2010, author Christopher Hitchens cited the phenomenon when talking about ethno-national conflicts. [10] "In numerous cases of apparently ethno-nationalist conflict, the deepest hatreds are manifested between people who—to most outward appearances—exhibit very few significant distinctions." Grayson Perry talks about his work and his current Serpentine Galleries exhibition, The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! 7pm, Mon 24 July. Please note: this event is now sold out. Lamentation”, 2012. Wool, cotton, acrylic, polyester and silk tapestry, 200 X 400 cm. British Council Collection. A big part of middle-class-ness is defining oneself as different, seeing one’s taste as ‘normal’ and other people’s as ‘not right’”. (Exhibition Catalogue, p. 12)

The Vanity of Small Differences is a series of six large-scale tapestries by the Turner-Prize winning artist Grayson Perry. Taking its cue from Ways of Seeing, John Berger's 1972 critical text on visual culture, this exhibition (2 June - 13 August 2017) explores the various formalistic strategies that artists employ to re-configure our perception of the world.Now open at the Hayward Gallery – Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art, featuring Grayson Perry Perry has instinct. He understands that working-class taste is about display and comfort and bling and play. Of course it is ridiculous, some of it. It is nasty and ostentatious at its worst, and as sentimental as we see in his depiction of it ( The Agony in the Car Park). But there is a generosity there – an ability to live in the moment. Getting ready to go out is as much fun as going out; in Sunderland, Perry played with the current aesthetic of the hyper-feminine ( The Adoration of the Cage Fighters). Barker: I look up to him because he is upper-class; but I look down on him because he is lower-class. I am middle-class. In the series Perry goes on 'a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain', to gather inspiration for his artwork, literally weaving the characters he meets into a narrative, with an attention to the minutiae of contemporary taste every bit as acute as that in Hogarth's 18th century paintings.

I could have gone to Uni, but I did the best I could, considering his father upped and left. He (Tim) was always clever a little boy, he know how to wind me up. My mother liked a drink, my father liked one too. Ex miner a real man, open with his love, and his anger. My Nan though is the salt of the earth, the boy loves her. She spent her whole life looking after others. There are no jobs around here anymore, just the gym and the football. A normal family, a divorce or two, mental illness, addiction, domestic violence… the usual thing… My friends they keep me sane… take me out… listen… a night out of the weekend in town is a precious ritual.’ The Agony in the Car Park, 2012. Photograph: Courtesy of the artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London Launching at 8pm on 27 April 2020, the series will offer master classes, top tips and inspiration. Each episode of Art Club will be themed, and Grayson is asking members of the public to send in artwork responding to each theme. In The Vanity of Small Differences Grayson Perry explores his fascination with taste and the visual story it tells of our interior lives in a series of six tapestries at Victoria Miro and three programmes, All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, for Channel 4. The artist goes on a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain, to gather inspiration for his artworks, literally weaving the characters he meets into a narrative partly inspired by Hogarth's A Rake's Progress. Much of the inspiration for the pieces came from Grayson Perry’s ‘safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain’, referring to Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and The Cotswolds. He travelled this journey for his TV show ‘All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry’, which was first aired on Chanel 4 in May/June in 2012. The collection involves the construction of characters from those that he met, incidents and objects that resembles his journey.In the second picture Tim’s mother appears grasping passionately at the hand of the night club singer (and failed pop star) who is to become Tim’s step-father. Tim is covering his ears in embarrassment in contrast to the little scene behind his mother in which, in younger days, he plays happily with a model aeroplane provided by his great grandfather. Thus while offering social commentary on class in Britain, Perry is along the way reflecting on secularisation understood as the loss of religious belief as an integrating force in society and giver of meaning on a personal level. Here I sense in his work a self-aware religious nostalgia. There was no golden age of religion, when all held hands in national unity, just as there was no working-class idyll for Tim Rakewell. But there remains a deep religious longing for something which would give the course of our lives more coherence than a night on the town, a day spent surfing online, and the pursuit of wealth and possessions. Inspired by Hogarth’s morality tale, A Rake’s Progress, Perry’s tapestries (on display in Salisbury from 29 June 2022) follow the socially-mobile life of fictional character Tim Rakewell from infancy to untimely death.