To accompany Grayson Perry’s Channel 4 series Who Are You?, the National Portrait Gallery has opened an exhibition of the artist’s new portraits, which aim to shed light on how we form a sense of identity in modern times.
Grayson Perry’s new Channel 4 series Who Are You? (the first episode of which aired last week) is not the first time the artist has skilfully negotiated ideas of identity and aesthetic taste on camera. In the 2012 three-part mini-series In the Best Possible Taste, Perry explored the British class system, using each episode to meet working, middle and upper class groups and probe what their class meant to them and how it was related to their visual tastes. It proved Perry not only as a adept observer (his experiences were distilled into three powerful tapestries that hung at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London), but also as a sensitive, likeable and perceptive TV presenter who could ask difficult questions and make sharp assessments without condescension.
It was no doubt with this in mind that Channel 4 invited Perry back for another similar project, this time dealing with a cross-section of different Brits (from disgraced politician Chris Huhne and Northern Ireland Loyalist marchers to X-Factor contestant Rylan Clark and a young female-to-male transsexual) in the midst of particularly poignant periods in their lives. By visiting Huhne on his day of release from prison, as well as a couple living with Alzheimers, a Muslim convert and deaf parents, the show aims to chronicle the complex and varied tapestry that is modern Britain.
Based on his time spent with each of these individuals, Perry has then honed their transitioning identities into a series of fourteen portraits (taking the form of minatures, statues, ceramic pots and tapestries), an exhibition of which opened at London’s National Portrait Gallery on Saturday.
Who Are You?
National Portrait Gallery, London
25 October 2014-15 March 2015
npg.org.uk