ART 'n' Ab ART - The Vanity of Small Differences

Grayson Perry Exhibition

Usher Gallery, Lincoln

You may have seen the Channel 4 series for which these huge tapestry were originally designed. A contemporary take on The Rakes Progress, Grayson Perry, with his usual perspicacity, insight and wit. explores the idiom of the self made man, the rags to riches narrative. How class itself, and how each of us sees class, informs and bedevils what our aspirations are for ourselves.

What TV cannot adequately convey is what the scale of these works feels like. They are huge, taking up a good part of the gallery walls in the splendid Usher Gallery extension. These are objects that you can stare at and study for ages, and still discover another aspect that is not apparent on first view. It is full of wry comments a plenty. 

One of my favourite remarks is a representation of a Hello magazine cover that says - Alan de Bottan shows you around his temple. Which has more mischievousness than at first appears. Satire is almost Grayson Perry's not very secret weapon. Amidst all the late 60's alternative comic styling and caricatures in his drawings, Perry has always been the inheritor of Hogarth's mantle. In this exhibition he is paying overdue direct homage to his eighteenth century antecedent.

And like Hogarth, Perry takes us through the birth. aspirations, successes and fall from grace of his contemporary version of the rake. These cross references, between today and the 18th century - the moral decadence, the corruption inherent to fame and success, the role of substance abuse in a person's decline. But no one here is treated unsympathetically, they as much the victim of the values, delusions and moral vacuum of the surrounding society, as the progenitor of their own fall.

His chosen medium, tapestry, holds another parallel, of the biblical or classically inspired wall hangings, meant to be instructional to the viewers, that once would have hung on baronial walls. In Perry's hands, these develop a garish colourfulness and rich range of stitch and effect. Manufactured through computer aided design and weaving processes, these works of art are also quite stunning visual pieces. Which communicate instantaneously what they are trying to say. This readability and accessibility is a touchstone of Grayson Perry as an artist, communicator and as a person. What you see is what you get.