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Crafts CouncilCollectionsExhibitions

Julie Cope’s Grand Tour: The Story of a Life by Grayson Perry

Crafts Council exhibition available for hire from 2022


  • Crafts Council collection
  • Crafts Council exhibition

Grayson Perry - Julie Cope’s Grand Tour installation image.

Julie Cope’s Grand Tour, a pair of large-scale tapestries by Grayson Perry, winner of the Turner Prize in 2003, were acquired by the Crafts Council for its national collection of contemporary craft in 2016 and have been touring the country ever since.

Julie Cope is a fictional character created by Grayson Perry – an Essex everywoman whose story he has told through the two tapestries and extended ballad presented in the exhibition. The Essex House Tapestries: The Life of Julie Cope (2015) illustrate the key events in the heroine’s journey from her birth during the Canvey Island floods of 1953 to her untimely death in a tragic accident on a Colchester street. Rich in cultural and architectural details, the tapestries contain a social history of Essex and modern Britain that everyone can relate to.

The tapestries are shown alongside a graphic installation, and specially commissioned audio recording of The Ballad of Julie Cope, a 3,000 word narrative written and read by Perry himself that illuminates Julie’s hopes and fears as she journeys through life.

These artworks represent, in Perry’s words, ‘the trials, tribulations, celebrations and mistakes of an average life’. Historically, large-scale tapestry provided insulation for grand domestic interiors; Perry has juxtaposed its associations of status, wealth and heritage with the current concerns of class, social aspiration and taste. To write Julie’s biography, he looked to the English ballad and folktale tradition, narrating a life that conveys the beauty, vibrancy and contradictions of the ordinary individual.

The narrative originated in Perry’s A House for Essex (2012–15) – his most ambitious project to date. Designed by Perry with FAT architects for Living Architecture, and located on the Stour Estuary at Wrabness, this residential secular chapel is dedicated to Julie Cope and serves as the artist’s tribute to the people with whom he grew up.

Explore the tapestries

  • Grayson Perry portrait. Photo: Katie Hyams and Living Architecture

Born in Chelmsford, Essex, in 1960, Perry is known for his ceramic art, in which traditional decorative forms reveal more complex narratives and irreverent political statements. A Turner Prize winner (2003), more recently he has reached a wider audience through a series of socio-cultural television programmes. The Essex House Tapestries: The Life of Julie Cope is the second work by Perry to be acquired by the Crafts Council. They follow the 1997 acquisition of his Mad Kid’s Bedroom Wall Pot (1996). Presented publicly outside A House for Essex for the first time, the tapestries mark a significant development in Perry’s practice and add to an emerging group of contemporary social portraiture and co-produced digital textile works in the Crafts Council Collection.

The exhibition will be touring with a bespoke and playful exhibition design that refers to Perry’s vision of the secular chapel. A Young Visitors’ Guide learning hand out with activities for families and an interactive app to explore the tapestries will also be part of the touring offer.

The exhibition is available for UK touring from 2022, and bookable in 8-12 week slots.

Purchase supported by the Art Fund, Maylis and James Grand, Victoria Miro and other private donors.

For more information contact the Exhibitions team


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