Watching the telly - Grayson Perry

Last night on Channel 4 there was another programme by Grayson Perry. His thing is to go and explore certain experiences of Being a Man and then make artworks out of them. In this show he went to some grim estates and interviewed some gangs of youths who wear hoodies, go about in gangs and get into trouble with the police. Sometimes there's drug-dealing, sometimes there are stabbings of other locals gangs. When Grayson interviews them - and their mums - you see there's more to the story that this. There's a lack of work for the men, and a lack of "roles" for male people.

Anyway, the artwork he made was a statue which was quite horrifying - a totemic figure with all these knives sticking out of it and the title "King of Nowhere". The thing about Grayson is he seems harmless and yet his work packs a punch. He tells you what he's thinking about - that the young men feel humiliated by their inability to find a place in the pecking order, except at the very bottom, and they have no father figure to give them a leg-up. In this case he shows that the young man himself is hurt and gets more hurt (all those knives) even as he struggles along with his balaclava and his hood up and his joints and his mates. They are also very skinny, these boys, as though they live on Monster Munch and tomato ketchup. Certainly, this show made me think about them with a teacher's concern.

It seemed to me that Grayson shouldn't have shown them his artwork, it was a very hurtful moment, as though he was sticking knives in them himself. They shrugged it off in front of the camera  - quite funny comments - but how did they actually feel? Grayson is very talented and very famous and I don't think he should use his position to be cruel.

watch it now: 30 days only


GQ magazine article here-suicide

My ridiculous New Year Resolutions

Recently I made some of the above. Well, it was New Year. I had forgotten my previous coming-to-terms-with-resolutions wisdom and I made the WRONG kind of resolution.

I decided that I must concentrate more on my work and less on the things that I love. The result would be that I would not feel anxious about being behind with my work, which is how I feel pretty much all the time. When I had got into a position of being ahead with my work I could do other things like: read books and newspapers. One of my resolutions was not to get into reading any kind of narrative, because that sort of thing takes over one's tiny mind. OK, my tiny mind. Everyone else's mind holds more equipment and can do many more things. So I thought I would read art books instead e.g. The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman by Grayson Perry, and The History of the German People by Mr MacGregor of the British Museum. I could pick them up, muse awhile, and put them down, muse finished.

Mobile Shrine to Alan Measles

The significance of this image is explained here: review of Unknown Craftsman

And I decided I would stop "buying" the Guardian when I popped into Waitrose just because it is free if you spend £5 and I always spend £5 because things in Waitrose are somehow slightly nicer than the average foodstuffs and more expensive (what a strange coincidence) without being ridiculously gussied up for the wannabees as they are in Marks. Because I get into the Guardian and find its columnists worth reading as long as you take a bit of time over them. Therefore, the Guardian is wasting my time and my brain when I should be working. (To start with, I found the Guardian impenetrable.  But you get used to it, and the effort it takes to read. You get to like it. Just like the crossword, which is REALLY hard.)

Anyway, I have failed to stick to these resolutions (apart from reading narratives, I have not read a novel or story since the Christmas hols) and I am rather glad, because life shouldn't be all horrid. There should be some changes and developments, and although my idea of narrowing was only temporary (the next 6 months), I can't bear it because my work is OK but not my passion.

My original resolution was: eat mainly soup. This is not a bad idea either because I am very overweight and I never have been overweight before. I have lost the knack of losing weight. Also, I really like soup, so it's do -able. The trouble is, I also have a husband and son for whom I cater and they are not satisfied with soup.

So far this year I have cooked dishes I haven't cooked before (duck with cherry sauce, last night, and something with meatballs (very good idea, meatballs, quick and tasty)) and that's a much better  resolution: cook some new dishes!

And although I really wanted to get involved with the Green Party this turns out to be not do-able either, as my local branch meets on Wednesday evenings, when I teach until 9 pm. I could do without teaching until 9 p.m. Basically, I want to do something worth doing with other people whom I might like, but this longing is being stymied at every turn.

Sad: I never saw the Germany exhibition at the BM (all over now) and I never saw the Rembrandts. Just never took the time out of my busy but meaningless schedule of working and hoovering, etc.

Grayson Perry:Who Are You?

This art exhibition was also a TV series on Channel 4 looking at how to explore questions of identity in a portrait. The people Grayson chose to explore did not have a straightforward identity, apart from Chris Huhne, the Great White Male, who seemed to Grayson to be incapable of change - unbearable really, so he made his portrait as a pot and then smashed it, mending it with gold. It was to remind Huhne that vulnerability can be an asset.

Grayson has portrayed himself as a map of days - a walled city, with things inside and outside the walls - a map that takes a long time to take in. He has portrayed the British with a huge, brightly coloured comfort blanket, with all the many things we love and identify with on it.

Grayson lived with the Jesus Army for sometime, observing how they have rescued people from their old self-destructive ways or life on the streets, to become a family in a shared house with a shared way of life. They sing in the evenings and instead of watching TV and they also share their money so he made their group portrait in the shape of a money box styled like a reliquary. Rather wittily it has "Jesus Saves" written at the top.

Another person who was going through an identity crisis was a man who was suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and this was also shattering for his wife. All their shared happy memories were disappearing. I loved the pot Grayson made them - the wife's scarf making a protection for them both, her face buried in his chest, perhaps with grief, and his face smiling - but vacantly, not understanding the nature of the problem.

You can see the exhibits here.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/reviews/grayson-perry-who-are-you-national-portrait-gallery-review-sublimely-beautiful-9820710.html

We could have spent hours looking at this.

This is on at the National Portrait Gallery, where the portraits are mostly rectangular objects with paint on them. But none of Perry's portraits are that. There were a lot of people looking at the Perry exhibits and talking about them with great animation and awe.

Henley Royal Regatta

The reason I have not written much lately is because my mother has been very poorly, and my writing has consisted of postings to a group of close family (who live hundreds of miles away) about her health and what we are doing for her. Really, my mum has turned into my hobby; taking her to the doctor and to clinics, shopping for her food and making sure she has clean nighties etc. However, her memory has just about gone; (but it comes back at times) and she won't eat. I won't go into all of it but I am looking after her because I can. I always wondered if I would ever be able to do this (be a parent to my own mother) and I am pleased to say that I can, and I am doing it.

S has come back from university with something that might be scabies. Glorious with his 2:1, but not to be hugged in case I catch the ghastly infestation. He too needs looking after (have to wash every stitch of his clothing and bedding) and find him some employment.

But today we are taking part in a multi-media art installation at Henley on Thames. I have a dress which is my tribute to Grayson Perry, (large yellow watercolour poppies) and a very large yellow hat. I am pleased with my ensemble (it came from the Princess Alice Hospice shop in Weybridge) and hope to contribute a splash of yellow to the colourful scene. I do hope the weather improves. I have not bought a colourful umbrella.

Normal colours - but we can improve upon these!

In my Henley outfit (Grayson Perry tribute)

Gloriana, made for the Queen's Jubilee, but she spurned it!!! 

Being a Man - Grayson Perry

Grayson talked to us dressed as his alter ego, Clare. It seems to be his public persona. Clare is a little girl in strap shoes, short socks and a lovely flowery dress, all petticoats, and a big lace collar. But Clare is also a powerful figure: larger than life. She takes the stage, she walks up and down it to talk to us and to show off, and she enjoys herself. She makes us laugh. Is the laughter partly a result of being made uneasy - the collision of opposite sexualities?

I can't remember anything Grayson said, apart from his map of the male brain, which put self-righteousness right at the front and was backed by an area called baloney, which is called upon when a man needs to justify himself. Very funny. He talked about men with beards and men who can mend things and men with sheds but I can't remember what his point was! Was is just to amuse? He thought that it's good for men to open up and talk about the deep stuff that affects them - he told us about his experiences of group therapy in which everyone cried every week - and he felt that was liberating. It worked for him.

He also told us that he was an alpha male and that he is very competitive on a bicycle. He has obviously done loads of cycling, and in races, he gloats as he overtakes.

But his competitiveness extends into his cross-dressing. He is proud to be the most famous tranny in the country, and he out-feminines all the women around him. He makes real women look drab and a bit lacking in effort. This is interesting. I am a cords and jumpers woman. I wear a kind of Barber jacket (not a real one, an M&S effort). I have no sexual persona. But I envy Grayson his lacy skirts. I do like lacy skirts. Somehow, it's more OK for him to wear them than for me to wear them, at our age. For him, it's a big camp show he can put on, but for me it's a one-way trip to ridicule. I think that for Grayson his cross-dressing is art : he denied this in the Reith lectures but it's obvious to me. He is making lovely tapestries now. You can see some on the web. The colours are gorgeous.

From the Guardian reviewer, who went to a few different events at the BAM festival:

Still, it's early days; given the demand for tickets, Kelly has already committed to BAM being an annual event, perhaps even the start of a movement. All movements need a manifesto, and it took Grayson Perry in one of his Bo-Peepiest pink party dresses to provide one. Few men have done as much original thinking about what it means to be male as the transvestite potter, champion cyclist, therapy survivor, Turner prizewinner, devoted husband and father.

Grayson insisted that all we believed about men could be unbelieved – men can, despite the propaganda, multitask ("I never go upstairs without carrying something") – and they can prevail in the constant battle with testosterone and keep it in their pants (frilly or otherwise), if they put their minds to it.

He ended with a scribbled series of demands. "We men ask ourselves and each other for the following: the right to be vulnerable, to be uncertain, to be wrong, to be intuitive, the right not to know, to be flexible and not to be ashamed." He insisted that men sit down to achieve them. He received, deservedly, a standing ovation.

Being a Man

We are going to a talk on Being a Man by Grayson Perry at the Southbank. Grayson will have given a lot of thought to this topic and I hope he's going to say some interesting things about it. It has been pointed out to me that my husband is a very stereotypical sort of man. He doesn't think much about his clothes or do anything new with his hair (what's left of it), he is chattier to women than he is to men, he gets together with other men to do things (row, make committee decisions) rather than for social reasons, he takes his friends for granted, he keeps up with sport (perhaps in order to talk with other men about it?), he doesn't notice dust or mess, he is happier mending things than buying things, he has nothing to say about his emotions most of the time, he hides behind a newspaper when motionless. On the other hand, some men would not go to a talk on Being a Man, and my husband is looking forward to it, so there you are, he can still surprise me.

I wonder if this talk will mention any of the above, and debunk it all, or decry it all!

In the Sherlock episode we have just seen there was the most ghastly bromance between Sherlock and Watson. They kept talking about their feelings for each other and praising each other in public. Really, it was completely out of character. I don't mind Sherlock hinting that he has feelings by perhaps, sulking or looking grumpy, but not this gushy stuff that would make the girliest girl look a bit soppy...

I loved the bit where they went all out for a big drunken stag night and in spite of Sherlock's calculations, they got drunk, incompetent, sleepy, sick, and home within 2 hours. I roared as it seemed all too familiar. It was a funny episode but I prefer the characters to be consistent. Sherlock's wall of mystery and restraint crumbled away like an Oxo cube.