Grayson Perry (born 24 March 1960) is an English artist, known mainly for his ceramic vases and cross-dressing. Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance. There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", his female alter-ego, often appear. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003.

Life and career[link]

Education[link]

Grayson Perry was born in Chelmsford. When he was seven, his father left the family because of his mother's adultery. Perry describes his father's departure as the event that had the largest impact on him in his life.^[1] He subsequently lived at Bicknacre, Essex, with his mother, his stepfather, a younger sister and two stepbrothers, and attended Woodham Ferrers Church of England School.

In his childhood Perry took an interest in drawing and building model aeroplanes, both of which were to become themes in his work.^[2] To escape from a difficult family situation and his stepfather's violence, he retreated to his bedroom or his father’s shed where he became absorbed in a fantasy life, sometimes involving a teddy bear that had become a “surrogate father figure”.^[1]

He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School. Perry took interest in conventional boys' activities, such as model airplanes, motorcycles and girls.^[1] He was in the school's Combined Cadet Corps and wanted to train as an army officer. He was involved in the Chelmsford punk scene in the late 1970s.

At the same time he had unconventional sexual desires and fantasies. He describes his first sexual experience at the age of seven when he tied himself up in his pyjamas.^{[citation needed]} From an early age he liked to dress in women's clothes^[1] and in his teens realized that he was a transvestite.^{[citation needed]} At the age of 15 he moved in with his father's family at Chelmsford, where he began to go out dressed as a woman. When he was discovered by his stepfather he said he would stop, but his mother told everyone about it and a few months later threw him out. He returned to his mother and stepfather at Great Bardfield.

At this time he decided not to join the army and following the encouragement of his art teacher, decided to study art.^[1] He did an art foundation course at Braintree College of Further Education from 1978 to 1979. He studied for a BA in fine art at Portsmouth Polytechnic, graduating in 1982.^[3] He had an interest in film and exhibited his first piece of pottery at the "New Contemporaries" show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1980. In the months following his graduation he joined the "Neo-Naturists", a group started by Christine Binnie to revive the "true sixties spirit – which involves living one’s life more or less naked and occasionally manifesting it into a performance for which the main theme is body paint” (Dawson, p. 81). They put on events at galleries and other venues.

When he went to Portsmouth in 1979, his stepfather told him not to return home. Perry has been estranged from his mother since 1990. After graduating he lived a hand-to-mouth existence in squats, at one point sharing a house with milliner Stephen Jones and pop musician Boy George, the three of them competing to see who could wear the most outrageous outfits to Blitz, a New Romantic nightclub in Covent Garden, London.^[4]

Perry started pottery lessons in September 1983 at the Central Institute where he was taught by Sarah Sanderson. His first exhibition of ceramics was in London in December 1983. He began to develop images and text that represented his experience in terms of “explicit scenes of sexual perversion – sadomasochism, bondage, transvestism”.^[5] For a while he made glazed plates with text because he could not make anything else. He was never motivated by a desire to work in clay as such, rather he chose pottery because studio ceramics was in “thrall to a formal idea”.^[3] Film having proved an inadequate medium for communicating his ideas about gender and society, Perry found in pottery an effective alternative because of “the ways artifice could be deployed to make the innocent or honest pot have a purpose and mean something”.^[3]

The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam mounted a solo exhibition of his work in 2002. It was partly for this work that he was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003, the first time it was given to a ceramic artist. He attended the award ceremony dressed as a girl, his alter-ego Claire.

In 2005, Perry featured in a documentary produced by Twofour for Channel 4, Why Men Wear Frocks, in which he examined transvestism and masculinity at the start of the 21st century. Perry talked about his own life as a transvestite and the effect it had on him and his family, frankly discussing its difficulties and pleasures. The documentary won a Royal Television Society award for best network production.

An autobiographical account of his formative years, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (co-written with Wendy Jones), was published in 2006. He was an arts correspondent for The Times until October 2007.^[6]

He lives in London with his wife, the author and psychotherapist Philippa Perry, and they have one daughter, Flo, who was born in 1992.

In 2007, Perry made the following comments on self-censorship in The Times: “The reason I haven’t gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat” (Jihadist violence cows "fearless" artists into silence), a reference to Theo van Gogh.

In 2009, Thames and Hudson published an anthology of his work by Jacky Klein.

Work[link]

Perry's work refers to several ceramic traditions, including Greek pottery and folk art.^[7] He has said, “I like the whole iconography of pottery. It hasn't got any big pretensions to being great public works of art, and no matter how brash a statement I make, on a pot it will always have certain humility ... [F]or me the shape has to be classical invisible: then you’ve got a base that people can understand”.^[8] His vessels are made by coiling, a traditional method. Most have a complex surface employing many techniques, including “glazing, incision, embossing, and the use of photographic transfers",^[5] which requires several firings. To some he adds sprigs, little relief sculptures stuck to the surface.^[3] The high degree of skill required by his ceramics and their complexity distances them from craft pottery.^[5] It has been said that these methods are not used for decorative effect but to give meaning.^[5] Perry challenges the idea, implicit in the craft tradition, that pottery is merely decorative or utilitarian and cannot express ideas.

In his work Perry reflects upon his upbringing as a boy, his stepfather's anger and the absence of proper guidance about male conduct.^[1] Perry's understanding of the roles in his family is portrayed in Using My Family,1998, where a teddy bear provides affection, and The Guardians,1998, which depicts his mother and stepfather^[2][3]

Much of Perry's work contains sexually explicit content. Some of his sexual imagery has been described as "obscene sadomasochistic sex scenes”.^[5] He also has a reputation for depicting child abuse and yet there are no works depicting sexual child abuse although We've Found the Body of your Child, 2000 hints at emotional child abuse and child neglect. In other work he juxtaposes decorative clichés like flowers with weapons and war. Perry combines various techniques as a “guerrilla tactic”, using the approachable medium of pottery to provoke thought.

As well as ceramics, Perry has worked in printmaking, drawing, embroidery and other textile work, film and performance. He has written a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence.

Perry frequently appears in public dressed as a woman and he has described his female alter-ego variously as “a 19th century reforming matriarch, a middle-England protester for No More Art, an aero-model-maker, or an Eastern European Freedom Fighter,”^[2][3] and “a fortysomething woman living in a Barratt home, the kind of woman who eats ready meals and can just about sew on a button”.^[9] In his work Perry includes pictures of himself in women's clothes: for example Mother of All Battles (1996) is a photograph of "Claire" holding a gun and wearing a dress, in ethnic eastern European style, embroidered with images of war, exhibited at his 2002 Stedelijk show.

One critic has called Perry “The social critic from hell”.^[2][3]

In 2011 Grayson Perry curated the Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman at the British Museum.^[10]

His television appearances include BBC's Question Time, Hard Talk, Desert Island Discs and Have I Got News for You. He has also been the subject of a South Bank Show in 2006 ^[11] and was the subject of a Imagine documentary broadcast on 1 November 2011.

References[link]

• Buck, Louisa. The Personal Political Pots of Grayson Perry

External links[link]

• Images and Essay on the Walthamstow Tapestry
• Video interview with Grayson Perry at the Victoria Miro Gallery on www.theartnewspaper.tv
• Victoria Miro Gallery
• Photos of Grayson Perry work
• Saatchi Gallery
• BBC Collective
• "Map of an Englishman"
• "Exquisite Corpse"
• "Image from artist Chris Dooks of Perry in 2011 Brick Lane"

Rufus Hound (born Robert James Blair Simpson^[1] on 6 March 1979)^{[citation needed]} is a British comedian and presenter.^[2]

Career[link]

Hound hosted Destination Three, the coverage of the Glastonbury festival and Top of the Pops in 2005 and 2006 alongside Fearne Cotton. He presented the idiosyncratic reality show Grime Scene Investigation on BBC Three with staff and students from Aston University, and narrated BBC Two's broadcasts of Mythbusters. He has also appeared in many comedy shows and quizzes such as Street Cred Sudoku and Celebrity Juice, where he is a regular panellist. He narrated the 2009 series Rocket Science and has appeared on The Apprentice: You're Fired! and Richard & Judy. He also presented Outtake TV on BBC1, replacing Anne Robinson.

In early 2008, Hound appeared twice on ITV's Thank God You're Here in the UK, after initially working as the warm-up act. In late summer 2008, Hound joined the panel show Argumental as the Blue Team Captain. Hound was the narrator for the gaming series Playr and presents What Do Kids Know? on UKTV-owned channel Watch. In 2010, he appeared in his own sitcom on CBBC called Hounded, where he plays a TV presenter who must save the universe from an evil doctor.^[3] Hound took part in Let's Dance for Sport Relief, dancing to Cheryl Cole's "Fight for This Love" and won the final of the series on 13 March 2010. Rufus also hosted the year 2000 edition of new show "My Funniest Year", a look at a past year of British television, which was broadcast on Channel 4 in September 2010.

Hound has been a guest on Richard Bacon's Beer & Pizza Club, he was a regular panelist on Celebrity Juice, hosted by Keith Lemon but has not appeared since 2012 and is believed to have left the show, and has appeared at Bright Club a number of times.^[4] He has also appeared as a panellist on the BBC One series Would I Lie to You? as well as the Channel 4 series You Have Been Watching. In January 2011, Hound participated in the former Channel 4 reality series Famous and Fearless came third for the boys' team, referred to as "The Ruthless Hound".

On 5 and 6 March 2011, Hound appeared on Comic Relief's 24 Hour Panel People during Argumental and Celebrity Juice. At approximately 00:13 on Sunday morning, the audience started singing Happy Birthday to You, in celebration of Hound's birthday. During the broadcast and during an in-between interview, he and Marcus Brigstocke publicly speculated that they have been dropped from the line-up of Argumental if the show continues.

Also in 2011, he appeared as a contestant in a celebrity edition of the Chase, "flirting" with Anne Hegerty. In 2012, Rufus was a team captain for Mad Mad World on ITV1

Personal life[link]

He was educated at Hoe Bridge School, Frensham Heights and Godalming College, where he was elected as a Student Representative and built the college radio station.

In April 2007, Hound was married at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada to Beth Johnson, whom he had met at the Reading Festival the year before.^[5] They have two children together; a son, Alby (b.2008), and a daughter, Hilda (24 July 2011).^[6]

On BBC Three's 20 October 2010 edition of Young Voters' Question Time Hound revealed he is a supporter of the Liberal Democrats.^[7]

Stand-Up DVDs[link]

• Being Rude (7 November 2011)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Rufus Hound at the Internet Movie Database
• Website for Hound's Wedding
• Play London interview with Rufus Hound (video)
• Rufus Hound on Twitter

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Julia Hartley-Brewer (born 1968) is a British broadcaster and columnist.^[1] She presents the weekday afternoon radio show from 1pm to 4pm on LBC 97.3FM, the talk radio station.^[2]

She was born in Birmingham and educated at Girls' Comprehensive School in Bath, and Woodhouse Sixth Form College in North London. Hartley-Brewer studied (PPE) at Magdalen College, Oxford, and after graduation at the Centre for Journalism Studies, Cardiff. She began her career in journalism at the East London Advertiser in Bethnal Green.^[1]

Later she worked as both a news reporter and political correspondent for the London Evening Standard and then joined The Guardian, working at the latter until around September 2000.^[3] She was subsequently with the Sunday Express until February 2011. She was Political Editor until 2007 and then Assistant Editor (Politics), also writing a column.

In 2006, she presented and narrated two political documentaries for BBC2/BBC4 about the history of British deputy prime ministers, called Every Prime Minister Needs a Willie,^[2] and the history of the leader of the opposition in The Worst Job in Politics.^[4]

She has appeared as a panellist on the comedy quiz show Have I Got News For You seven times as well as being a regular panellist on BBC1's Question Time^[1] and Radio 4's Any Questions? She is a regular pundit and commentator on TV and radio, including for Sky News, the BBC News Channel, BBC1's The One Show, ITV's Tonight show, Lorraine on ITV, Radio Five Live, and Radio 4's Today and PM programmes. Hartley-Brewer also works as an after-dinner speaker and awards ceremony host.^[1]

She is married with one daughter.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Julia Hartley-Brewer at the Internet Movie Database

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Patrick Brill, better known by his pseudonym Bob and Roberta Smith (born 1963) is a British contemporary artist.^[1]

Life and work[link]

Brill graduated from University of Reading, Brill was awarded a scholarship at The British School at Rome while still an undergraduate. Brill followed this with a MA at Goldsmiths College, London.

Brill devised a number of artist personas and types of work and then sent examples of these to commercial galleries, where the first to gain a positive response was Bob and Roberta Smith.^{[vague][says who?]}

Patrick Brill paints slogans in a unique brightly coloured lettering style on banners and discarded boards of wood and exhibits them in galleries of contemporary art across the world. The slogans are usually humorous musing on art, politics, popular culture, Britain and the world in general and they often support his activist campaigns, such as his 2002 amnesty on bad art at Perogi Gallery, New York. A recent example of his gift for merging art & politics was illustrated in the exhibition Peace Camp. Bob & Roberta Smith took part in and curated the show held at The Brick Lane Gallery - the show & programme of events explored artists perceptions on Peace. The exhibition featured over 100 artists including Gavin Turk, Rebecca Taber, Wolfgang Tillmans, Abby Jackson and Seb Patene.

Noted for sign painting, Bob and Roberta Smith also make sculpture using cement, as in his 2005 Cement Soup Kitchen at Beaconsfield Gallery, London.[1]

"[Patrick Brill] grew attracted to postures of amateurism and failure. His more recent work has suggested an interest in the utopian impulse of art as an agent for social change, although this often seems hedged with doubt or irony" MORGAN FALCONER: "Bob and Roberta Smith" Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press, [2/10/06], [2]

Patrick Brill also performs music, often with a group known as The Ken Ardley Playboys, who had their first 45 released by Billy Childish on his label Hangman Records. Brill also hosts The Bob & Roberta Smith Radio Show called MAKE YOUR OWN DAMN MUSIC which is on Resonance FM.

In March 2005 Bob and Roberta Smith was commissioned to act as curator on a series of five public art projects in the Thames Gateway area of Essex. The projects were collectively named Art U Need and were documented in a diary-format book by Smith in 2007.^[2]

Patrick Brill teaches at the Sir John Cass Department of Art, Media and Design, London Metropolitan University.

A sculpture proposed by Bob and Roberta Smith was shortlisted for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, London [3].

Exhibitions[link]

2009

• Altermoden, Tate Triennial exhibition, Tate Britain, London

2008

• Tate Christmas Tree, Tate Britain, London
• Fourth Plinth, The National Gallery, London [4]

2007

• Peace Camp, The Brick Lane Gallery, London

2005/06

• The Beautiful Poetry of Bob and Roberta Smith, Hales Gallery, London
• Make Your Own Damn Art, Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston, UK
• Should I Stay Or Should I Go? (Dilemmas For Margate), Margate High Street, Turner Contemporary

2004

• Help Build The Ruins of Democracy, The Baltic

2003

• The Mobile Reality Creator, Compton Verney.

2002

• Its not easy being a famous Artist, Galerie Praz Delavallade, Paris,France.
• Useless men and Stupid Women, Anthony Wilkinson Gallery, London, UK.
• Bunch of Cowards, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, UK.
• The New York Art Amnesty, Pierogi 2000, New York, USA.
• The Art Amnesty, Deptford X, London, UK

Collections[link]

• Tate Collection / London, UK
• Arts Council Collection / London, UK
• British Council Collection / London, UK
• Southampton City Museum & Art Gallery/ Southampton, UK
• sammlung FIEDE / Aschaffenburg, D
• Goss Michael Foundation / Dallas, US

Bibliography[link]

• Smith, Bob and Roberta. 2007. Art U Need: My Part in the Public Art Revolution. London: Black Dog Publishing
• Smith, Bob and Roberta. 2004. Make Your Own Damn Art. London: Black Dog Publishing

References[link]

External links[link]

• The Official Bob and Roberta Smith Website
• Hales Gallery Bob and Roberta Smith
• The Ken Ardley Playboys Website
• Interview with Myartspace

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Roberta Smith is an art critic for the New York Times and a lecturer on contemporary art.

Born in New York City and raised in Lawrence, Kansas, Smith studied at Grinnell College in Iowa. Her career in the arts started in 1968 while an undergraduate summer intern at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. The following year she was awarded a fellowship to participate in the Independent Study Program (ISP) at the Whitney Museum where she met Donald Judd and became interested in Minimal art. After graduation, she returned to New York City in 1971 to take a secretarial job at the Museum of Modern Art, followed by part-time assistant jobs to Judd and Paula Cooper in 1972. While at the Paula Cooper Gallery she wrote exhibition reviews for Artforum, and subsequently for Art in America, the Village Voice and other publications as well. She began writing for the New York Times in 1986.

Smith has written numerous essays for catalogues and monographs on contemporary artists, and wrote the featured essay in the Judd catalogue raisonné published by the National Gallery of Canada in 1975. In 2003, the College Art Association awarded Smith the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism.^[1] She was ranked 80 in ArtReview's guide to the 100 most powerful figures in contemporary art: Power 100, 2010.^[2]

Smith is well-known for her clear, insightful and accessible writing style. She not only writes about contemporary art but also about the visual arts in general, including decorative arts, popular and outsider art, design, and architecture.

Smith lives in New York City with her husband Jerry Saltz, senior art critic for New York Magazine.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Articles in the New York Times, accessed May 18, 2009
• Interview in the Brooklyn Rail, accessed May 18, 2009