Free Admission
These tapestries tell the story of class mobility and the influence social class has on our aesthetic taste. Inspired by William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, the six tapestries chart the “class journey” made by young Tim Rakewell and include many of the characters, incidents and objects that Grayson Perry encountered on journeys through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and The Cotswolds for the television series ‘All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry’.
The television programmes were first aired on Channel 4 in June 2012. In the series Perry goes “on a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain,” to gather inspiration for his artwork, literally weaving the characters he meets into a narrative, with an attention to the minutiae of contemporary taste every bit as acute as that in Hogarth’s 18th century paintings.
Manchester Art Gallery was only the second gallery outside London to be showing Grayson Perry’s The Vanity of Small Differences.
Images
The Adoration of the Cage Fighters
The Expulsion from Number 8 Eden Close
The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal
© The Artist Gift of the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery with the support of Channel 4 Televsion and the Art Fund, and additional support from AlixPartners