Grayson Perry at Victoria Miro
The Walthamstow Tapestry (detail), Grayson Perry, 2009, Courtesy of Victoria Miro Gallery and The Paragon Press
London’s Victoria Miro Galley is showcasing The Walthamstow Tapestry, Grayson Perry’s newest and largest work as well as a selection of new ceramics until 7 November
From a distance this giant tapestry (it’s 15 metres long and was specially made to run the entire length of the gallery’s top floor exhibition space) looks decorative and colourful, with some motifs recalling traditional Sumatran batiks and others eastern European folk art. It seems to be made up of an elaborate hotch-potch of isolated figures going about their daily lives – shopping, hoovering, reading, biking – but as you get closer you see all sorts of brand names dotted apparently randomly amongst the figures. For example, the letters KFC are under a hippy-look guitarist, Bollinger by a man apparently meditating under a tree, Easyjet under a hanging man (one wonders if Perry has had a bad time on a flight recently) and the words Starbucks are woven above a church-like building. The names don’t seem to have any direct relation to individual figures, but the idea is that we are all invisibly linked by our knowledge and experience of brands so that brand identity has become part of our contemporary psyche. It makes for an interesting – and decorative – comment on today’s consumer society and shows that Perry is just as good at doing social commentary in textile as he is in ceramic.
www.victoria-miro.com
