Greyson Perry

Greyson Perry visited UEL for a guest lecture and to be honest I thought it was going to be a rather boring experience… I was proved so terribly wrong. Perry was quite frankly bloody brilliant. The lecture theatre was literally buzzing when the lecture started and it didn’t die down until long after the lecture had ended. Perry (who wouldn’t define himself as a potter but an artist that makes pots) showed a slideshow of various artworks (such as the path to becoming an artist headscarf and various handmade vases as well as a beautiful folk art family quilt where if a family member died a member of the family would move a coffin from the edge of the quilt into the cemetery.). Perry talked of his struggle in the art world, as people tend to think that pottery isn’t art and that people don’t expect much of pottery. Perry was kind enough to provide a list of tips for the budding artist, which were:

- Turn up on time

- Be reliable

- Be nice

- Put the hours in

- Don’t overprice your artwork

- Always wear something distinctive at an art exhibition

- Don’t do a fucking neon artwork!

- Put the names of collectors on your artwork

- Make sure people know you’re the artist

- Call it something like ‘drawing of a fat person’ and a fat person may very well buy it

- Sell to journalists

- China don’t like things that are easily faked

- A gift shop

- A sign at your exhibition stating “warning, adult themes”

- A sponsor for any exhibitions

He went on to mention that he is not a fan of graffiti art or manga (which hurt me greatly) or overly realistic because there isn’t really a point anymore as you could just take a photo, and also that there is enough life drawing, we don’t need any more. His lecture also covered exhibitions, saying that people these days want a ‘theme park sudoku’ style experience from an exhibition; they want to be shocked and awed. He then covered artists in general; how he is fed up with people thinking that because they are doing something quirky they think it is art, and its wrong that because we understand conceptual art that everyone is an artist, people also seem to look too hard for meaning in art. The Q&A was also rather enlightening although he specified that we shouldn’t ask him what his favorite colour is. He stated that being famous has ruined being a tranny for him, whatever materials you work with when you are working with them is when you get your ideas, thinking you need money to be an artist is a load of tosh, it’s very tempting when you get a ‘hit’ to replicate it but it’s a bad idea, he happens to be a slight perfectionist that doesn’t learn from his mistakes and hates it when things go wrong in the kiln etc, making pottery is difficult but satisfying but Photoshop is great because it has an undo button. He also went on to say that you can fill a gallery using Photoshop in four months but with pottery it would take 2-4 years and that an exhibition just isn’t going to happen without a sponsor. It was the first time I had ever ‘met’ (been in the presence of) a famous artist and he was just lovely.