Grayson Perry

Grayson Perry CBE RA is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster. He is known for his ceramic vases and colourful tapestries, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British "prejudices, fashions and foibles".

Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", his female alter-ego, and "Alan Measles", his childhood teddy bear, often appear.

He has made a number of documentaries, has curated exhibitions and has published two autobiographies, Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (2007) and The Descent of Man (2016), written and illustrated a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence (2012), written a book about art, Playing to the Gallery (2014), and published his illustrated Sketchbooks (2016). Various books describing his work have been published. In 2013 he delivered the BBC Reith Lectures.

Perry has had solo exhibitions at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Stedelijk Mustem Amsterdam, the Barbican Centre, the British Museum and the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Arnolfin Bristol, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. His work is held in the permanent collections of the British Council and Arts Council, Crafts Council, Stedelijk Mustem Amsterdam, Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

In 2003 he was awarded the Turner Prize and was interviewed about the win and resulting press in Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World. In 2008 he was ranked number 32 in The Daily Telegraph's list of the "100 most powerful people in British Culture." In 2012, Perry was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life.