Grayson Perry on Late Review BBC2 last night
- Thread starter Orang Utan
- Start date
To the power of 1000000000000000000000000000000 and so on.
He is tremendously tedious. I wonder if his bizarre voice is an attempt to inject at least some degree of originality into his pronouncements.
Thanks for the tip iROBOT. Just booked a ticket.
oh dear - i seem not to have earned my place on urban 75 yet.
how many posts before i'm allowed an opinion then?
Yours was a pretty moronic and self centred remark - i would expect nothing less on this forum tbh - i didn;t want to grace it with anything too "clever" as a reply.
Well, that was quite interesting and amusing.
However, I thought the discussion never really moved out of second gear. There seemed to be a lot of jumping around between relatively unconnected topics and Will Self came across as a little bit tentative in his questioning.
Grayson Perry was witty and very down to earth. It might have been better to have him expounding a bit more on his work.
I really wanted to ask a question about how he views internet culture in relation to his own attempt to create a Grayson Perry 'civilisation'.
There seemed to be a lot of memetic stuff there that paralells online experiences.
But I didn't work up the courage to ask for the mic and was rather crestfallen when Will Self briefly alluded to the same sort of ideas in closing.
However, I thought the discussion never really moved out of second gear. There seemed to be a lot of jumping around between relatively unconnected topics and Will Self came across as a little bit tentative in his questioning.
Grayson Perry was witty and very down to earth. It might have been better to have him expounding a bit more on his work.
I really wanted to ask a question about how he views internet culture in relation to his own attempt to create a Grayson Perry 'civilisation'.
There seemed to be a lot of memetic stuff there that paralells online experiences.
But I didn't work up the courage to ask for the mic and was rather crestfallen when Will Self briefly alluded to the same sort of ideas in closing.
thanks for this - wondered how it wentHe was a bit rude to me at the booksigning
What did you do?!
iROBOT
CURRENTLY RE-BOOTING
Thought it was quite a good show last night. There is so much you can cover in an hour and half, and considering this was their first meeting, the "sussing out" tension between the two was evident and no less better for it.
My fav part was when a member of the audience (older lady, very middle class) said to GP "I do very thoroughly approve of you" 
My fav part was when a member of the audience (older lady, very middle class) said to GP "I do very thoroughly approve of you"
My fav part was when a member of the audience (older lady, very middle class) said to GP "I do very thoroughly approve of you"
quimcunx
imprimeo, lamino, distribuo
I only asked him a question. I got him back this morning though
I thought there was a knife missing from my kitchen this morning...
The one thing that you didn't get last night and which was a bit frustrating because it should have been the kind of thing that an in depth conversation like that should have is the depth of meaning or ideas behind his work.
They sort of skimmed over the surface of it and Will Self seemed to divert away from pressing the issue when Grayson Perry said he didn't know what he meant by praxis.
I wonder if there's an element where Grayson Perry is actually the sort of quintessential celebrated British artistic talent in that although he looks very unusual and seems to do a lot of stuff that is a bit 'edgy', the whole thing is more about the personality and brand of an eccentric as opposed to anything else.
iROBOT
CURRENTLY RE-BOOTING
There is a lot to this. Modern Art is more polemic then it's ever been, which naturally is very personality centered.
However, I do think his work (the maps especially) will stand the test of time.
madzone
Physically unfavourable
Ok - I'm back home and on my laptop now so I can type properly.
A lot of his ideas and motivations are touched on in the book. However, what is striking by it's absence is any kind of technical notation, particularly with the textiles. It's said that he eschews the practice of having teams of people making his work for him but that seems only to be true of his pots and prints.
The thing with craft is that people want to know how you do it. They want to know if it's terracotta or porcelain, if it's a wood fired kiln or electric, they want to know if the fabric is hand printed, how many stitches per inch in the tapestry, is it wool, are the dyes vegetable etc. When that woman asked him last night if he used a cartoon for the Walthamstow Tapestry he looked completely blank and Will Self had to try to bail him out. That's when I realised the tapestries aren't made by him.
On doing a bit of googling it appears the 'Vote for Alan Measles for God' one was sewn by someone else. It doesn't say who though. Same with the Walthamstow Tapestry. I went to see it this morning along with some new pots and a few prints at the Victoria Miro Gallery. There is such a lack of technical information on the work. There's plenty of information on the mesage but nothing else.
Now, while I don't suppose this is a major problem it doesn't sit easily with me that there is nothing to inform people that he only designs the tapestries. The tapestries that were part of the exhibition that the Alan Measles one was in were sent to China to be woven so it's likely his was too although it was needlepoint while the rest were woven. Is it disingenuous or deliberately misleading? Can he call himself the artist with regard to the tapestries or is he a designer?
I asked him what drew him to tapestry as a medium and he was really dismissive, started waving his hands round and said 'Oh God, I don't know' In reality he's just drawing pictures and someone else is making the tapestries but why do them in the first place?
I dunno - it just doesn't sit easily with me
A lot of his ideas and motivations are touched on in the book. However, what is striking by it's absence is any kind of technical notation, particularly with the textiles. It's said that he eschews the practice of having teams of people making his work for him but that seems only to be true of his pots and prints.
The thing with craft is that people want to know how you do it. They want to know if it's terracotta or porcelain, if it's a wood fired kiln or electric, they want to know if the fabric is hand printed, how many stitches per inch in the tapestry, is it wool, are the dyes vegetable etc. When that woman asked him last night if he used a cartoon for the Walthamstow Tapestry he looked completely blank and Will Self had to try to bail him out. That's when I realised the tapestries aren't made by him.
On doing a bit of googling it appears the 'Vote for Alan Measles for God' one was sewn by someone else. It doesn't say who though. Same with the Walthamstow Tapestry. I went to see it this morning along with some new pots and a few prints at the Victoria Miro Gallery. There is such a lack of technical information on the work. There's plenty of information on the mesage but nothing else.
Now, while I don't suppose this is a major problem it doesn't sit easily with me that there is nothing to inform people that he only designs the tapestries. The tapestries that were part of the exhibition that the Alan Measles one was in were sent to China to be woven so it's likely his was too although it was needlepoint while the rest were woven. Is it disingenuous or deliberately misleading? Can he call himself the artist with regard to the tapestries or is he a designer?
I asked him what drew him to tapestry as a medium and he was really dismissive, started waving his hands round and said 'Oh God, I don't know' In reality he's just drawing pictures and someone else is making the tapestries but why do them in the first place?
I dunno - it just doesn't sit easily with me
London_Calling
Pleasant and unpatronising
That's an interesting post but didn't you complain to me about how disecting stuff (specifically that tv series Torchwood, i think) sucks the life/joy out of things? Maybe it was someone else 
madzone
Physically unfavourable
That's an interesting post but didn't you complain to me about how disecting stuff (specifically that tv series Torchwood, i think) sucks the life/joy out of things? Maybe it was someone else
It's supposed to be dissected. It's art ffs. I'm writing an essay on him as well so I guess I'll need to do a bit more then just go 'I like Perry Grayson, he's pretty' You can't compare Torchwood with this
Artists make things themselves, designers get other people to do it for them. If he was open and transparent about having the tapestries done somewhere else I wouldn't have an issue with it. The tapestries are described as being made by him but they almost certainly aren't. He's done the drawings for them, nothing else. Why is he so reticent to say where they're done? Is it becasue they're done in he developing world I wonder? He's very vocal about that, about our consumerism in the West so you'd think if he has the tapestries made somewhere ese he'd be oppenly stating that he pays a fair wage and be clebrating the weavers for their skill. He doesn't though, he takes credit for the tapestries as they are.
Also, his pots are very nice but they aren't the pinnacle of ceramic ability. He uses the decoration tecnhiques quite nicely but I've seen it done before tbh. It also struck me how samey his work is. It's all stream of conciousness, list making and quite navel gazingly self absorbed. It's almost like he's stuck in that phase where as a toddler you do something funny and your parents laugh so you do it again and again and again. I thought his answers were all very interesting in the talk until I read the book and realised he was just regurgitating what was writen there. In all of it there's just something 'missing' and I wonder if he'd be quite so popular if he didn't wear a frock.
London_Calling
Pleasant and unpatronising
Just because you can't . . .It's supposed to be dissected. It's art ffs. I'm writing an essay on him as well so I guess I'll need to do a bit more then just go 'I like Perry Grayson, he's pretty' You can't compare Torchwood with this
