Tapestries created by one of the UK’s favourite artists and chronicling the life story of a fictional Sunderland man are set to return to the city.
Turner Prize-winning Grayson Perry’s hugely popular series of six tapestries, The Vanity of Small Differences, will return to Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens from Saturday 9th April.
The tapestries were created while Perry was filming the 2012 Channel 4 documentary, All in the Best Possible Taste. They are inspired by 18th-century writer William Hogarth’s moral tale A Rake’s Progress which follows Tom Rakewell, a young man who inherits a fortune but fritters it away on sex, drinking and gambling.
In a similar vein, The Vanity of Small Differences follows the journey of Tim Rakewell as he journeys through the social strata of modern Britain, from a working-class boy to a computer software millionaire.
The collection depicts many of the characters and places Perry encountered while travelling through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and the Cotswolds for the series.
The free exhibition is the sixth in Sunderland Culture’s series of Arts Council Collection National Partners Programme exhibitions and is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England.
The exhibition will also include the monumental tapestry Comfort Blanket, described by Perry as: “A portrait of Britain to wrap yourself up in, a giant banknote; things we love, and love to hate.”
The tapestry was based on a friend whose family had walked out of Hungary fleeing the Soviet invasion in 1956. Her mother referred to Britain as her ‘security blanket’. As their plane came in to land in the UK, the tannoy relayed a message from the Queen saying ‘Welcome to Britain, you are now in a safe country.’
This will be the first time Comfort Blanket has been shown in the region, and the tapestry is on loan from the Victoria Miro Gallery in London.
Grayson is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster known for his ceramic vases, tapestries and cross-dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British “prejudices, fashions and foibles.”
He has made a number of documentary television programmes and has curated numerous exhibitions. He has also had solo exhibitions at the Bonnefanten Museum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Barbican Centre, the British Museum and the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Arnolfini in Bristol, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003.
For further information, head to sunderlandculture.org.uk.
