Grayson Perry At Turner Contemporary

[poliphilo]

Grayson Perry is a sprite. He dances about being adorable and mischievous and one prefers him in small doses. One piece of Perry (vase, print, tapestry) is piquant; a whole gallery becomes wearisome. His work is fussy and detailed and as much text as artwork. It demands to be read- and in bulk it tires the eyes without rewarding them with very much of aesthetic interest. (Said one gallery goer to another, "Have you got a headache yet?") His lines are strong, his colours bright; he's all surface- with a lot to say about society but not so much about human nature- certainly very little about its depths. He's clever, provocative, spiky, sometimes obvious and trite. He's a cartoonist- but one who has now graduated to wall-sized tapestries. Sex is his strongest subject- and his strongest work is the earliest- where the sexual persona he has created for himself still has about it some of the swirling darkness from which it emerged.