Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Crafts
Grayson Perry is definetly one of my favourite Essex boys. After seeing his show today, I want to visit it again and again, learn more about him and also make so much more stuff. Mind blowing stuff, I highly, highly recommend it. The show is an installation of objects made by him, alongside objects made by unknown men and women throughout history from the British Museum’s collection - with a brilliant narrative. Perry said that "Everything in the British Museum was contemporary once" and I had never really thought about the objects displayed like that before. And to me Perry's work is so contempory featuring beautiful vases showing obese teenagers, cyber bullying and the Lotto rollover - brilliant!
Alan Measles features very heavily in the show. Do you not know who Mr Measles is? Well he is the 50 year old dictator of Grayson Perry's imagination - his beloved teddy bear -"When I was a toddler Alan was the name of my best human friend and I had measles". Obviously the real Mr Measles didn't appear in the show, as he is far too precious to be in a display but his presence is there none the less!
When I was really little I hated going to museum and galleries because "ewww old things are boring and too smelly". But this show really has drilled into me that all these things displayed in glass cabinets in dark museums where once the cutting edge and spectacularly new and exciting to the viewer. The excitement I feel when I look at Perry's work. I feel that it is so appropriate that this show is in the British Museum because so often it is easy to just walk to the Mummy's or the Rosetta Stone but everything displayed was once modern and not primitive and boring as I used to think when I was small.
The show runs till February and I will certainly revisit it. Also listen to the Grayson Perry, Desert Island Disks it's very good!
http://www.britishmuseum.org
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