The Wallace Collection, a storied historic mansion in London that houses an extraordinary, far-ranging collection of art and objects, invited the artist Grayson Perry to embed and create an exhibition that responds to their collections. Collected during the18th and 19th Centuries, the museum is dripping in Rococo, houses breathtaking Old Master paintings, amour, ceramics, medieval relics and sculpture. It would be, for a lesser artist, a daunting assignment.
Grayson Perry, affectionally referred to as a “National Treasure” in the UK was unquestionably the right person to choose for this creative residency. Perry burst onto the art world in the 1980’s as a potter making vessels imbued with deep and complex psycho-sexual content. He has a transvestite alter ego named “Claire” who was his partner in forays into photography and textiles. Awarded the Turner Prize in 2003 , elected to the Royal Academy in 2011, and received a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honors List in 2013; and finally-knighted in 2023, Perry has bloomed into one of the most acclaimed British artists working today, although strangely underrated and under-known in the United States.
Perry has worked on monumental tapestries– most notably The Vanity of Small Differences inspired by Hogarth’s The Rakes Progress. He has worked in film/television, hosted radio shows, architecture, written and illustrated graphic novels, as well as continuing his work in ceramics . He was the perfect person to work in and with the eclectic Wallace Collection.
Perry also wrote all of the labels for the exhibition; while omitting typical information such as dimensions, materials and dates, he provides a different approach to museum labels. The image below is the label for the tapestry pictured above. It is flanked by two ceramic busts entitled “Serious People.”
Perry’s brings to his work with the Wallace Collection a deep and committed understanding of the work of untrained and outsider artists. His own work, and his curation, reflect his exploration of mental illness, born of personal, family experience. Perry discovered that, during World War II, a self-taught artist named Madge Gill had shown her work at The Wallace Collection. A marginalized and somewhat tragic figure, Gill made elaborate embroidered tapestries, many of which greet the viewer in the first room of the Perry exhibition. It was a fluke that her work was shown at the storied Wallace Collection. It was an inspiration for Perry.
Against this backdrop, Perry created an imaginary personage named Shirely Smith whose “Delusions Of Grandeur” led her to believe that she was the rightful heir to The Wallace Collection. The exhibition is built loosely around her life. Shirley’s presence is woven throughout the exhibition, appearing in ceramic narratives, tapestries, photographs, furniture, and her own small exhibition of drawing and collage.
If this all sounds overly complicated, it’s not. If you give yourself over to the premise of the exhibition, it all makes perfect sense. Perry’s exhibition riffs on the notions of collecting, obsession, colonialism, gender, mental illness and beauty. I urge that you take the audio headsets when entering the show. Ordinarily I loathe the audio museum tours, but Perry not only wrote all the narrative, he recorded the audio. He narrates his process of both the making of the work and the underlying psychological motivations and process. The narration is funny, devoid of pretense or self-importance, and crystal clear in its intent. Perry’s comfort with making himself vulnerable, and the clarity with which he tells his own stories, draws the listener in and helps immerse us into his world.
Best known for his ceramic work, Grayson Perry has collaborated with master metalsmiths to create stunning sculpture in steel and brass that refer to both the Wallace’s amour collection and Perry’s interest in symbols of masculinity and aggression. While not my favorite works in the show, they are a virtuoso foray into yet another medium. Fabricated by master UK metalworkers, they could have stepped right out of the Wallace collections.
Perry’s ceramics and textiles are sublime. In some of his narrative pots, Perry introduces Shirely to both Claire and to Alan Measels, another alter ego. As always, he tweaks our notions of gender and sexuality, using layer upon layer of glazed and ceramic decals, imagery that echo the complexities of his and our own psyches. Perry uses the gloss beauty of glaze in the most sensuous ways. Rarely has an artist managed to tackle the weighty challenges of the human condition while making such gloriously beautiful work. Too often it seems that contemporary artists tack in one direction or the other, perhaps in the view that “beauty” undercuts their important message or that beauty must stand on its own without broader message or resonance. Perry worships playfully at dual alters– humor and humanity, meaning and mastery,
In this body of work, Perry has also played gently with Artificial Intelligence and computer-generated imagery. He has seamlessly integrated new technologies into his work, never losing the sense of human touch. It is fascinating to watch an artist venture far outside of his comfort zone and use technology in such an effective way.
Woven throughout this expansive array of objects is the sad, imagined narrative of Shirely Smith. Note: she refers to herself throughout the exhibition as “The Honorable Millicent Wallace”. Shirley’s lonely life of mental illness stands as a secondary structure to the exhibition and one with a political narrative. Her delusion is that she is the rightful heir the Wallace Collection, but she seeks a nurturing home more than the collection’s riches; all she wants is to be able to live there in peace. Her fanciful pencil drawings are of happy young girls and she longs to be one of them. Perry, a transvestite, has always identified strongly with women and their fate at the hands of men. As Shirely shuffles through life and Perry imagines her making copies of art in the collection in her search for peace and safety.
Yes, this is indeed a very high-concept exhibition. To fall in love with it, as I did, you must abandon your art world “cool” at the door and give yourself up to the objects and the stories they tell. Grayson Perry is a profoundly gifted storyteller, a master of this most ancient and most contemporary artform.
Delusions of Grandeur- Grayson Perry at The Wallace Collection thru Oct. 26. Booking in advance is necessary.
About the Writer: Melissa Stern lives in NYC and The Hudson Valley. Her mixed material sculpture and drawings are in corporate and museum collections throughout the US. Her multi-media project The Talking Cure has been touring the United States since 2012. She wrote about art and culture for The New York Press and CityArts for eight years and has been a contributing writer to Hyperallergic and Artcritical. Melissa has joined Art Spiel as a contributing writer.
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