Grayson Perry – sailing into the afterlife

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Grayson Perry: The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman

Beth Williamson finds humour and seriousness at the British Museum

Grayson Perry’s current exhibition at the British Museum is a tour de force.  Climbing the stairs from the museum's Great Hall to the upper floor one gets a sense of being lifted above the millieux of tourist and school groups into a more contemplative gallery space, and there is the anticipation of something wonderful to come.

Yet, our encounter with Perry’s work in this show, as he responds to works specially selected from the British Museum’s vast collection, is not an easy one. In another setting we might appreciate Perry’s textiles, pottery and other works for purely for aesthetic reasons. Or, we might ponder their radical and transgressive messages, or marvel at their skilful execution.  In the heart of the British Museum, however, these works ask questions of their surroundings and set up difficult dialogues with the works that are shown alongside them.

At the press view, Perry was a generous interviewee, careful to explain that the exhibition, two and a half years in the planning, was not intended for a specialist audience. Rather, it was he hoped ‘permission giving’ and accessible. He hoped visitors would leave the show inspired to make something themselves or to look at the world afresh after encountering these objects, which are powerful, moving and visceral. 

In his inimitable style, Perry was as playful and humorous in interview as he is in his art-making. This is not to suggest any lack of seriousness in the work, or the thinking behind it.  ‘The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman’ is full of religious language and symbolism. Amongst the items Perry has selected from the collection are pilgrims’ souvenirs, pilgrim badges, icons, shrines, relics, amulets and talismans. His own works sit alongside these handpicked treasures and somehow serious dialogues emerge between them.

Here Perry repeatedly negotiates the idea of journey as transformative experience. Pointing out that around six million people visited the British Museum last year, Perry suggested that we flock to museums like pilgrims to a shrine. For him, this journey is marked out in personal and fairly modest terms in the work  A Walk in Bloomsbury  (2011), while visitors to the exhibition are asked to reflect on their own presence in another pot,  You Are Here  (2011) where a busy collage of characters are presented as contemporary cultural pilgrims.

In the tapestry piece  Map of Truths and Beliefs  (2011), Perry maps out sacred and secular sites of pilgrimage from Mecca to Gracelands. The boldness of line and colour within this work lend it an informality which perhaps goes some way towards the ‘permission giving’ that Perry talks about. The content remains deadly serious, with Jerusalem, Auschwitz, Ground Zero and Robben Island all featuring in this huge tapestry (290 x 690 cm), which foregrounds the craft of making as well as its subject matter.

Craft is, after all, what this exhibition is about. The tomb of its title, ‘The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman’, is an iron ship  sailing into the afterlife. Even in this centrepiece to the exhibition, however, there is humour too – a craft for a craftsman. ‘It is hung with casts of the fruits of his labours and carries a cargo of blood, sweat and tears.’ As historic pieces from the collection of the British Museum mingle with Perry’s contemporary responses, new dialogues are set up and new questions  have to be asked of the works and of the museum. In a sense this show is a museum within a museum and all the better because of that.

The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman  by Grayson Perryis published bythe British Museum Press, London, 2011. 204 pp., 200 colour illus, £25.00. ISBN: 978-0714118208