2011 11 03 Grayson Perry visits Manchester

Annual Pilkington Lecture a 'sell out'!

The event was a ‘sell out’. His sometimes shocking and mostly hilarious stories about his lonely young life, leading to the typical enhanced life of a London squat dweller, as he started to create art and learn about making pots, kept the audience enthralled throughout the evening. He dressed for the occasion in leather bloomers depicting on the front his personal god figure and constant companion his teddy bear Alan Measles and on the back his election to the Royal Academy of Art, except that the letters RA have been sewn on the wrong way round by mistake and now read AR. His pink regency style shoes and sparkly tights were a perfect match for his pink satin blouse.
While his style of dress may be colourful and bound to turn heads, his words are witty and profound.  Art becomes ‘Art’ now because it has been exhibited in an Art Gallery - the Marcel Duchamp theory, which has been around too long and is no longer amusing. He prefers the rubbish tip test; would a piece of art on a rubbish tip be recognisable as a work of Art? His talk was thought provoking and placed a big emphasis on craft. “Conceptual Art is so tired and old hat”. “When the label is bigger than the art work something has gone wrong” The audience were absolutely bowled over by his charm, his slim figure and his fabulous legs!

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