Photograph by Dafydd Jones
Grayson Perry's new body of work, 'The Charms of Lincolnshire', goes on display at Victoria Miro in London on 5 July. The show brings together new works by Perry and artifacts from various museums in Lincolnshire to create 'a narrative three-dimensional poem'.
Having concentrated on urban, metropolitan themes in his work, Perry in this exhibition returns to his rural roots, creating work about the countryside. But this is far from an exhibition that extols the virtues of Britain as a Wordsworthian bucolic paradise. As Perry says, "The biscuit tin idyll of cosy village Britain is luckily in the past, for it was a candlelit back-breaking, sexist, tubercular child-death hell. The ghosts of long-ago children flicker in the dead-eyed familiars of wax, porcelain and wooden dolls I have chosen and in the stitches of the samplers worked by young pious hands".
The show focuses on the Victorian era and themes that have a strong emotional charge for the artist such as death, childhood, religion, folk art, hunting and the feminine. From thousands of items in local museums Perry has selected objects that fit into each of these themes, and in response to them has created new works, including pots, ceramics, embroidery, photography and for the first time pieces in cast iron. "My initial idea was to focus these themes around an unknown artist, a mentally ill (Victorian) farmer's wife driven insane by the loss of her children. Her ghost and those of the children haunt the choices and works I have made for the show."
The centre-piece of the exhibition is a hearse dating from 1880, which inspired Grayson Perry to create a cast iron child's coffin entitled Angel of the South. Perry describes it as both a non-triumphal monument to the countless victims of empire building in the Victorian age and the north of England's technological dominance. The coffin bears images that relate to medieval cathedrals and Benin Bronzes from West Africa - part of the developing world - "the south", where today premature death is still pre-dominant amongst children.
The exhibition is presented in association with the Museums of Lincoln and the Arts Council. A 38pp catalogue produced by The Collection, Lincoln accompanies the exhibition with a text by Grayson Perry (special exhibition price £5), and Grayson Perry has designed a souvenir tea towel, also £5.
Watch this space for news of a special limited edition sampler made by Grayson Perry.
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