Grayson Perry

View Grayson Perry Prints at Shapero Modern

Grayson Perry (1960 – Present) was born in 1960 in Chelmsford, England. Perry studied an Art Foundation course at Baintree College of Further Education from 1978 to 1979, going on to do a BA in fine art at Portsmouth College of Art and Design, graduating in 1982. He had a keen interest in film and pottery, in particular, exhibiting his first pieces at a New Contemporaries show at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, 1980.

In 2007, Perry curated an exhibition of art by prisoners and ex-offenders entitled Insider Art at the Institute of Contemporary Arts funded by the Koestler Trust, a charity promoting art as rehabilitation. In 2011, Perry returned to the annual Koestler Trust Exhibition at the Southbank Centre as a judge for the Art by Offenders award. Perry’s best-known ceramic work is celebrated for its successful marriage of ancient Greek tradition and folk art with modern political and cultural references.

Perry’s work has been criticized and celebrated in equal measure for explicit sexual content, the controversy surrounding which he has addressed in various documentary series on Channel 4. He has held a plethora of solo exhibitions worldwide, including the 2006 exhibition at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Grayson Perry: The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! at the Serpentine Gallery in 2017, and the Grayson Perry: The Pre-Therapy Years at the Holbourne Museum in Bath in 2020. He has been included in group exhibitions at the Saatchi, the Royal Academy, the Foundling Museum and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He is collected privately and publicly worldwide, including at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Tate Gallery, London.