Artist Focus | Grayson Perry

When researching artists for our brief, I couldn't not include Grayson Perry and his work on the set of tapestries called 'Vanity of Small Differences'. Basically a melodramatic reflection of society today, each tapestry tells the story of one man's quest to rise in social standings and the effects and consequences of doing so.

'Vanity of small differences' is a Freudian term meaning 'we dislike noone quite so much as our dearest neighbour', and through his tapestries, Grayson Perry is trying to convey the effects of consumerism in our modern world combined with this. In a nutshell, we buy things that we think are going to make us an individual and make us stand out when really we are just following the heard and conforming to fit in with the rest of our social classes.

Particularly at my age, I've noticed how appearances and social standing come before anything else, and everyone is fighting some sort of battle to the top whether that be to rise in the social classes like our friend in the tapestries or who can get the most Instagram likes or Twitter followers.

To pinpoint consumerism, Perry has hidden a lot of brand names and logos within his work, which get more extravagant as his character climbs the social ladder. He portrays to us that although you may seem to be on top of the world and better than others, belongings and appearances aren't everything.

I really like Perry's melodramatic and exaggerated style of working and it's a style I'm interested in experimenting with myself, perhaps as either a celebration of the people of Birmingham or as an insight into the culture and social classes of Birmingham.


*photographs of Perry's work c/o https://www.victoria-miro.com/exhibitions/429/