Grayson Perry (4th artist lecture of lockdown).

I feel like I don’t have that much to say about Grayson Perry, I don’t really resonate with him, his work or even his motives that seem to be important in his practice. Such as his value of the artists being a celebrity and this kind of idea of an artists ego. This idea was something that was spoke about a lot throughout the documentary, Grayson expressed his desire to make this kind of celebrity artifact, an artwork that would be in a museum not an art gallery and viewed like a relic almost. I definitely don’t think I resonate with these kind of ideas, but I guess it is interesting to see an artists discussing and owning their desire to be a celebrity almost, compared to my own opinion where this is definitely not what art is about, if you get me.

Although I didn’t feel like I resonated with Grayson Perry watching this documentary it was interesting to see his work involving his teddy, you’ve got to admit its pretty fun. Grayson has a teddy called Alan that he has had since childhood. Just the way Perry describes this teddy is pretty incredible, throughout the documentary he explained how Alan is the possessor of all good qualities of man, a surrogate father and the god of this imaginary world. He even went as far to state that all cuddly toys and God have a lot in common. Grayson saw Alan as being his artifactual object and so it only makes sense for Alan to have his very own shrine that is of course also a motorcycle. Typically people go to shrines to visit and pray etc. So it only makes sense that this shrine is to go on a journey to be taken to people and therefore Alan and Grayson where to tour around Germany on this quite incredible bike. The best part of watching this whole documentary was at this point of Grayson and Alans crazy bike journey around Germany and Amelia(AKA- flat mate, friend and collaboration partner) looks at me to say she could see me doing that, and I honestly I can’t say she’s wrong.

I honestly feel like I don’t have anything important or analytical to say about this documentary, I’ve basically just spoke about how I found it funny. I guess there were a couple of comments Grayson made about his art practice that I do understand and fell myself. He mentioned how he often just does what he feels is right and later figures out what it is, which I get, for a lot of my works recently I have a rough idea when making the work and as the project goes on or maybe even the moment I perform, I suddenly have a clearer understanding of what the is about. I also found that some of his works especially the shrine to Alan where quite conceptually chaotic and to an extent this is something I’ve been finding with certain works of my own and have been worried about how this can come across to viewers.