Grayson Perry: Smash Hits
Royal Scottish Academy (presented by National Galleries of Scotland)
22 July – 12 November 2023
Grayson Perry | National Galleries of Scotland
This summer, the biggest ever exhibition of Sir Grayson Perry’s work will take place at the National Galleries of Scotland.
Covering his 40-year career, Grayson Perry: Smash Hits will take over the Upper Galleries of the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh from 22 July until 12 November. This will be the only opportunity to see this exhibition, which offers an exclusive look at the celebrated artist’s lifetime of creation.
Perry has gone from taking evening classes in pottery to winning the Turner Prize, presenting television programmes on Channel 4 and writing acclaimed books. Always keen to do the unexpected, pottery allowed him the opportunity to indulge his fascination with sex, punk, and counterculture amongst other things, in the most unlikely and polite of art forms.
Today, he is one of Britain’s most celebrated artists and cultural figures. Grayson Perry: Smash Hits not only includes his most famous works, but also the first pieces he made as a student in Portsmouth. One such treasure is Perry’s earliest plate, made during his first week at evening class, Kinky Sex (1983).
This comprehensive exhibition, which encompasses more than eighty works, has been developed in close collaboration with the artist and Victoria Miro gallery. Instead of being presented chronologically, the show offers a journey through the main themes of Perry’s provocative art, including masculinity, sexuality, class, religion, politics and identity.
Grayson Perry: Smash Hits will display subversive pots, intricate prints, elaborate sculpt sculptures, and huge, captivating tapestries – all imbued with Perry’s sharp wit and social commentary.
Grayson Perry: Smash Hits will bring together all the artist’s meticulously detailed prints and imaginary maps. The exhibition will feature many of his tapestries, such as the rarely shown Walthamstow Tapestry (2009) which, at 15-metres in length, presents a birth-to-death journey through shopping and brand names.
Visitors will also encounter the intricate cast-iron ship, Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman (2011) which was the centrepiece of Perry’s 2011 exhibition of the same name at the British Museum. The tomb is a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen of history.
Two rooms centre on the monumental tapestry series: Vanity of Small Differences (2012), which focus on class and are loosely based on William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, as well as House for Essex tapestries (2015), which explore the life of a fictional Essex woman Julie Cope.
The final room will exhibit new works made in the past few months especially for the exhibition. These include a richly detailed tapestry, a large woodcut print, and pots and plates which explore themes of national identity.
Perry’s latest pots, in the form of medieval beer flagons, are decorated with traditional slipware techniques and reference subjects ranging from the polarising effect of internet debate to heraldic iconography.
This room will also include objects chosen from his recent Channel 4 docuseries Grayson Perry’s Full English. Perry travelled around the country to try and uncover what Englishness means today. He invited interviewees to select personal items which to them represented Englishness.
Piqued by the opportunity to show some of these items, alongside his new works on Englishness in Scotland, Perry has included various objects from a pub sign to a football flag, and a teacup to a letter from the Queen.
Grayson Perry said: ‘I feel honoured, excited and also daunted by the thought of seeing the largest ever exhibition of my work this summer in Edinburgh.
“Honoured to be given such an opportunity in such a fine gallery, excited to share my smash hits with the Scottish audience and the festival crowds. Daunted because whenever I walk amongst a substantial show of my art the same thought floods into my head, ‘oh my god the man hours!’
“Just one of the grand rooms like those of the Royal Scottish Academy could easily hold two, three, four years of my studio life such is the density of my works. These objects contain so much for me, my hopes, my ideas, my lusts, my laughter, my pride, my love. What they contain more than anything is my time. Forty smashing years.’
John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, said: ‘This exhibition, the biggest Grayson Perry show ever held anywhere in the world, offers a unique opportunity for visitors to discover the scope of the artist’s practice.
“It has been forty years since Perry first started making his pots and plates, and twenty years since he gained international acclaim when he won the Turner Prize; it is the ideal moment to celebrate Perry’s achievements to date.’
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