The
Unpopular Culture Collection
(Selected by)
Grayson Perry
AT Southampton Guildhall
David Hepher
David Hurn
Homer Sykes
Tish Murtha
Tony Ray Jones
These were the best of an interesting collection of art work,
This is what it is all about:
Unpopular Culture, 16 January - 15 March
Grayson Perry selects from the Arts Council Collection. Grayson Perry was catapulted into the public consciousness in 2003 when he won the Turner prize, accepting his award dressed as a transvestite alter ego, Clare. A unique figure in the international art scene, Perry is best known for his ceramic pots which he adorns with subject matter ranging from his childhood in rural Essex, his transvestism, and his reflections on British art and society. It is perhaps his desire to reinterpret the past that informs Perry’s recent interest in curating exhibitions from public collections. The exhibition highlights this emerging aspect of Perry’s practise and offer a unique and personal view of the Arts Council Collection.For over a year Perry has researched the Arts Council Collection’s holdings, painstakingly scouring acquisition catalogues and considering works in the stores. Unsurprisingly for an artist who has always positioned himself on the margins of the art world, he has found himself drawn to art made” before British art became fashionable”, including such work that conveys a sense of tradition, restraint and quiet accomplishment. His selection will feature modern British paintings, sculpture and photographs that embody a certain nostalgia, while exploring notions of place and environment, issues of identity and class and ideas about form. Rather than retreat into a world of rose-tinted romanticism, Perry presents an alternative view of British art, one that reassesses the relationship between past and present and questions the boundaries between the radical, the conservative, and the radically conservative.
On show are more than 70 works by 50 artists, covering figurative painting, bronze sculpture and documentary photography dating from the 1940s to 1980s.Represented in the display are Kenneth Armitage, Frank Auerbach, Ian Berry, Anthony Caro, Lynn Chadwick, Barbara Hepworth, LS Lowry, Henry Moore, Paul Nash, Eduardo Paolozzi, Martin Parr, Tony Ray-Jones and Homer Sykes, and two works by Perry.