Grayson Perry

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Grayson Perry (born 24 March 1960), is an award-winning English artist, best known for his ceramics and cross-dressing. He has also worked in other forms, including drawing and embroidery, and has written a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence.

Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours. The subjects tackled by the decoration is often at odds with its superficially attractive and genteel nature: child abuse (in We¹ve Found the Body of your Child, 2000) and sadomasochism sometimes feature, among other comments on social and sexual practices. There is often a strong autobiographical element.

Images of Perry himself also frequently feature in his work. Sometimes it is his cross-dressing alter ego Claire who appears. Mother of all Battles (1996), for example, is a photograph depicting Claire holding a gun and wearing a dress in the style of Eastern European folk dress embroidered with images of war.

Perry won the 2003 Turner Prize.

In 2005 Perry starred in an one hour television documentary produced by Twofour shown on Channel 4 called Why Men Wear Frocks in which he examines transvestism and masculinity at the start of the 21st century. Perry talks about his own life as a transvestite and the effect it has had on him and his family, discussing the pain and humiliation but also the thrill of frills, in a totally honest and unsparing way. The documentary won a Royal Television Society award for Best network production.

An autobiographical account of his formative years, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (co-written with Wendy Jones), was published in 2006.

He is an arts correspondent for The Times.

[edit] Background

Perry was born in Chelmsford in Essex, and educated at King Edward VI Grammar School. He studied fine art at University of Portsmouth and took evening classes in pottery. He is married to a psychotherapist and has a daughter and lives in North London.

[edit] External links

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