Grayson Perry at the British Museum

In a sort of treasure hunt that questions the concept of civilisation, Perry's new works are ensconced among the objects in the museum's permanent collections.

A pastel pink and blue motorbike, complete with a teddy bear shrine and bear-shaped wing nuts, is the exhibit that welcomes visitors to The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, Grayson Perry's current show at London's British Museum. Positioned outside the exhibition's entrance, the custom-built confection confirms at least one thing about the Turner prize-winning British artist; he isn't afraid of his own celebrity.

This play to the crowd continues with the first work encountered inside the exhibition itself: You are Here, a glazed, stencilled and enamelled pot inscribed with the comments Perry imagines of the visitors make the pilgrimage to his latest offering. From those keen to satisfy themselves that they're 'more clever than this celebrity charlatan' to the people that came because 'there was such a buzz about it on Twitter', the comments leave the visitor disarmed by their own reasons for visiting this show by an artist as notorious for his pot-making as his dress-wearing.

Installation view of <i>Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman</i> at the British Museum. — Installation view of *Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman* at the British Museum.

Yet The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman is more than a show about celebrity. Two years in the making, it consists of nearly two hundred objects that Perry has picked out from the museum's vast collection of over eight million. Their variety hints at its overwhelming diversity, ranging from Buddhist votive offerings to an earring with the ear still attached.

Grayson Perry (b. 1960), <i>Map of Truths and Beliefs</i> (detail), 2011. Courtesy the Artist and The Paragon Press, London. © Grayson Perry. Photo: Alicia Guirao, Factum Arte. — Grayson Perry (b. 1960), *Map of Truths and Beliefs* (detail), 2011. Courtesy the Artist and The Paragon Press, London. © Grayson Perry. Photo: Alicia Guirao, Factum Arte.

Behind this bewildering array is Perry's long-held interest in the concept of civilisation. On display is the material culture of what the artist sees as the fundamental components of any culture, be it the contemporary West or Ancient Egyptian: birth, death, magic, pilgrimage, religion, sex and sexuality. Alongside the Museum's artefacts are thirty new pieces and eight earlier works by Perry that show up the persistence of these ideas in his own oeuvre. Many of these are inspired by the imaginary civilisation of Perry's own childhood. The god that oversees this realm is Alan Measles, the childhood teddy bear that has carried out all of Perry's increasingly real adventures, such as the pilgrimage to Germany on the motorbike.

What is most striking about this juxtaposition of Perry's works with objects from cultures near and far is that they have so much in common.

Lead-glazed earthenware dish decorated in coloured slip with the bust of William III. Ralph Simpson, Staffordshire, England, c. 1700. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

What is most striking about this juxtaposition of Perry's works with objects from cultures near and far is that they have so much in common. At times this creates a degree of confusion: a curious Georgian-style tortoise-shell bonnet turns out to be not one of Perry's own creations, but a nineteenth century artefact from Samoa. This cultural similitude could be negatively interpreted as a sign of the homogenising effects of globalisation, but Perry encourages us to see it instead as indicative of the universality of cultures: on one instance, he describes photo albums on today's smart phones as the contemporary equivalent of ancient Japanese portable shrines. He also uses the exhibition to articulate these cultural connections in his own work; the label for 2009's Walthamstow Tapestry reveals that it was inspired by the motifs and colour palette of Java Batik sarongs, revealing a new complexity to otherwise familiar pieces.

The Walthamstow Tapestry brings us to the theme that is at the heart of the exhibition. While Perry is a highly skilled potter, the tapestry, like most of his works on display, is not made by his own hands but by the myriad of craftspeople he employs. These are the makers that give the show, and its piece de résistance, its name.

The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman occupies the centre of the exhibition's final section. It is a towering cast iron coffin ship hung with vials of the blood, sweat and tears of the skilled makers behind Perry's work and those in the British Museum as a whole. In the centre is a 250,000-year-old flint hand axe from the Museum's collection, which Perry presents as a relic not of some forgotten religion, but rather what he sees as a lost tradition of craftsmanship.

This rhetoric of loss is typical of much craft-related discourse, yet it is surprising to see it in Perry. On the one hand, his own commissioning of craftspeople to make everything from tapestries to motorbike leathers demonstrates craft's current vitality. On the other, Perry is normally a reluctant spokesperson for the craft community, adamant on its need to maintain relevance in aesthetic, cultural and technological terms. This is what his own ceramic condemnations of contemporary celebrity-obsessed culture, made with the aid of emails and Photoshop, can be seen to do.

Grayson Perry (b. 1960), <i>Our Mother,</i> 2009. © Grayson Perry, courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Photo: Stephen White. — Grayson Perry (b. 1960), *Our Mother,* 2009. © Grayson Perry, courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. Photo: Stephen White.

While there is certainly no lack of ego in the curator behind The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, the show is a delight. Cleverly considered juxtapositions bring alive artefacts normally overlooked when presented alongside hundred of objects of the same type or from cultures far away. Through some adept curating Perry has managed to reveal mankind's universality without effacing our cultural differences: in the end it seems that we are all the same, and yet all gloriously different.
Catharine Rossi

Grayson Perry at the British Museum

In a sort of treasure hunt that questions the concept of civilisation, Perry's new works are ensconced among the objects in the museum's permanent collections.

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