Grayson Perry

2023 - 1 - 26

Post cover — Image courtesy of "The Guardian"

Grayson Perry's Full English review – dangerously close to tainting ... (The Guardian)

This series isn't the first time Perry has explored our national identity, and it's getting repetitive. It's not helped by his failure to tackle one ...

But surely he is there to question what many would call a racist’s psyche, and either dismantle their arguments or grant the existence of an occasional kernel of truth (some people do come for a better life rather than simple succour – why, how and should that change things?). If he is not here to mark the difference between the second option and the rabid froth that gathers round it, what is Perry’s job? There is also the matter of his lacklustre partner, Kirk, who drives him around in a white van and seems cowed into near silence either by his passenger or the presence of the cameras. But a hint of overexposure is there, and it taints a brand like Perry’s that is predicated on him being an outsider – not part of the usual presenter gang who are known for A Thing and are prepared to squeeze every last drop out of it. Of course it is a fertile field and you can see why they have returned to it for a less oblique study. Perry’s mission is to explore what people mean by “Englishness” through interviewing denizens of the north, south and the Midlands (collecting their donations to a planned exhibition on the subject that he will create when he gets home).

Grayson Perry's Full English on Channel 4 review: a typically ... (Evening Standard)

The artist's latest series looks at what it means to be part of this country, from the south coast to the Scottish borders. VIEW COMMENTS. <p>Grayson Perry ...

Perry ends by joining a friendly group in the world’s most polite protest (they have a procession, climb over a fence, and sit under an oak they’re not meant to sit under, listening to folk songs) against the limiting of access for the public to vast swathes of England. Anyway, it’s a great start to a show that comes at the concept of who we are from unexpected angles. This time, he is collecting items from the people he encounters which, for them, exemplify what it means to be English. As Perry says, Jeremy’s notion of this country is one of “a bygone England, one that bears little resemblance to the multicultural country we live in today”. “It’s history,” comes the wiffly response; “My family – they’re all military – they all fought for this country, they all love this country; it’s that, I suppose,” which is startlingly vague considering how dedicated Jeremy is to his unformed cause. He has set up a Twitter feed, and makes propaganda videos to alert people to the arrivals, whom he calls “illegals without IDs”.

Grayson Perry's Full English is an antidote to the culture wars (iNews)

Pictured: Grayson participating in a ritual with druids. Perry participating in a ritual with druids (Photo: Channel 4/Swan Films). Ask me to conjure a picture ...

Still, there’s laughter between the men and an understanding that not every disagreement has to end in a shouting match. Grayson Perry’s Full English doesn’t give any answers to what Englishness means in 2023. “They don’t seem like the most frightening enemy to me,” Perry tells Jeremy before asking: “what are you defending?” The boatsman is protecting his country’s history, he says, same as his ancestors who were all in the military. That’s not to say that Perry is a wholly impartial guide to England’s ideological nooks and crannies. Take his first stop in Dover, for example, where he meets Jeremy, who patrols the Channel looking for immigrants trying to reach England’s white cliffs illegally. At the end of the trip, they’ll be put on display in a specially curated exhibition.

Grayson Perry's Full English, review: artist merely brushes the ... (Telegraph.co.uk)

Perry meets Jeremy, who patrols the Channel to intercept migrant boats, a grove of druids and football fans, but gets no definitive answers.

Perry befriended a black football fan who was proud to carry the England flag, which made for an intelligent discussion. It was an enjoyable hour, but got us no closer to pinning down an English identity. [Channel 4](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/channel-4/)), in which he travels around in a white van – with White Van Man at the wheel – to explore our ideas of Englishness. Perry’s great skill is to keep the conversation genial – even this was a perfectly pleasant encounter, but it could have gone so much deeper. Perry failed to interrogate Jeremy on whether harking back to an all-white England could be construed as racist. “England, in many ways, is a series of clichés linked by motorways,” he told the Today presenters.

Grayson Perry peels back the layers of Englishness as he meets lots ... (Independent.ie)

Only England could have produced Grayson Perry. He is a transvestite potter and Turner Prize winner who grew up in both financial and emotional poverty — he ...

Unforgivably, there was no discussion either about the good old unromantic bus, the workhorse of modern transport in both cities and countryside. This was the first episode in a three-part series and concentrated on the south of England. In fact, there was no discussion about pricing or government subsidies for public transport, just as there had been no discussion about being fit enough to cycle. Here he met the passionately English Jay, who is a black man who wears a shirt with the George’s cross on his breast. He is a potter and Turner Prize winner who grew up in both financial and emotional poverty — he was not too fond of his mother — and was recently knighted. Now, as “an artist and an Englishman” he has turned his clever gaze on to his native country in Grayson Perry’s Full English (Channel 4).

Grayson Perry's Full English review — Perry tucks into an identity crisis (The Times)

On Radio 4's Today this week Grayson Perry described England, with his filthy Sid James laugh, as “a series of clichés linked by motorways”.

Grayson Perry's 'Full English' is a missed opportunity (UnHerd)

All too often, these pen portraits turn into caricatures. Grayson Perry — the artist best known for his ceramics, cross-dressing and barking laugh — is the ...

The product of his travels will not be something true, but something vivid and two-dimensional — something that looks good on a vase. Much of Perry’s analysis, delivered through punchy narration, makes too straightforward a contrast between the multicultural Englishness of the present, and the nostalgic leftovers of the past. It is part of a noble-minded attempt to depict and understand its political-cultural fabric on behalf of the capital. He is Essex-born, the product, he has said, of a violent and tempestuous home. There is a rich, but uneven, English tradition of cosmopolitan artsy types shouldering their travelling pack and setting out to take the temperature of the provincial realm. Grayson Perry — the artist best known for his ceramics, cross-dressing and barking laugh — is the latest to take up this challenge, in his new documentary series, Grayson Perry’s Full English.