![]() In reality I made him cars and planes and guns out of Lego or Meccano. The company that made things for him was called Kenilworth. I retreated into myself, and I constructed a rich fantasy world where I worked for Alan as a bodyguard but also as a designer. I was very self-sufficient as a child, emotionally and psychologically. When my father left us, he took over the role of the father figure. I was given him when I was a baby, and he became a boon companion throughout my childhood. He still is – he’s here in the studio with me now. She’s just me in a dress.Īlan Measles was my teddy bear. People often talk about me having an alter ego. It came about when I was a member of the Beaumont Society years ago and you had to be anonymous, because back in the 1970s, people were more paranoid about being found out to be a transvestite. Claire, of course, is the name that I ended up with when I put on a dress. Artists are just middle-class professionals trying to make a living.Īnd there’s St Claire at centre-left – she’s part of the pantheon too. But it is quite common now for people to do all the things that once scandalised society: drugs, illicit sex, fetishism, unshaven body hair we are all bohemians now. Outrageous gestures rapidly become clichés: a urinal, a shark – how radical! Vases are polite, humble, domestic – not qualities celebrated at the cutting edge. ![]() The art world, like any culture, can be unaware of the pervasive influences that bind the group. But I give a big middle finger to that idea, with shiny, showy work that’s pitting itself against muted tastefulness. Good taste, the design historian Stephen Bayley says, is not about standing out, it is about fitting in. The middle-class elite love to think that they have better taste than other people. This piece features a woman jacking up, a pitbull, fish and chips, and all these class-based ideas of bad taste. I’ve always been interested in class and taste, and the idea that art somehow upholds them. The Grayson Perry Trophy Awarded to a Person with Good Taste, 1992 And I love that close-up, natural texture that gives you such seductive, visual pleasure. I like to make things that people want to own – I’m partly a commercially-driven artist. I also love patina, rust, and the look of old objects, because they suggest the authority of history. I have always been interested in clichés, fakes and strange cultural connections these are subjects I come back to time and time again. The DNA of my art is already there back in 1981. ![]() Although it came out of the foundry all shiny silver, now it looks so “authentic” because it was sitting in our back garden for 30 years. I was also obsessed with both motorcycles (despite being unable to afford one at the time) and the intricate workmanship of early English artefacts such as those discovered at Sutton Hoo.įor this crest of the helmet – made out of wax, then cast in aluminium – I sculpted a vintage British motorcycle in the style of ancient coins or the Uffington chalk horse. ![]() I was a product of post-modernism, throwing images together ironically. We had a little foundry and there was a man there – ex-SAS, he smelled of snuff and oil – who took me under his wing because I was one of the few students who liked doing metal casting. I made this in my second year studying Fine Art at Portsmouth Polytechnic.
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