Grayson Perry has just hung the biggest exhibition of his career, and it’s brought on an epiphany. “I’ve come to realise I’m a very old-fashioned artist,” says the irrepressible Turner Prize-winning potter, relaxing in his London studio. His concerns, he tells me, were “do the colours go together, are the compositions working, is it a nice texture” – basically, “what looks good together”.
That might seem a surprising pronouncement from someone who is widely regarded as having changed our perceptions of what an artist can be. Since coming virtually from nowhere to win the 2003 Turner Prize – notoriously wearing a dress to accept Britain’s biggest art award – Perry has been hyper-visible across an extraordinary range of platforms. He’s traversed Britain in TV series challenging our ideas about art and taste. He’s published books detailing his harrowing childhood and redemption through therapy. He’s done stand-up comedy, newspaper columns, and a new musical about his life, for which he’s written the lyrics. Oh, and back in June he was knighted by Prince William, with Perry again, of course, wearing a dress and full make-up.
