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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Lifestyle
Lizzie Thomson

Grayson Perry’s Brexit vases are now on display at the the V&A Museum

Grayson Perry's Brexit vases have gone on display at the V&A Museum, on the day the UK was originally due to leave the EU.

The vases, entitled Matching Pair, have been acquired by the museum for permanent display in its Ceramics Galleries.

Perry made the vases in 2017, with one representing Leave and one representing Remain, as well as interpretations of 'Britishness' from each side.

He used social media to gather suggestions for what to include on the ceramics. On the Remain vase teapots, marmite and the Waitrose logo can be found alongside pictures of Gary Lineker and Shakespeare. The Leave vase has images of Nigel Farage, Winston Churchill and the Queen.

The vases first went on display at Perry's 2017 Serpentine Gallery show, The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!, and the making of the works shown in Channel 4 documentary Grayson Perry: Divided Britain.

Standing at just over a metre in height, the two works are the latest addition to the V&A Museum's collection of Perry's work, which already includes the My Heroes ceramic and the linocut self-portraits Mr and Mrs Perry.

Grayson Perry said: “I am so pleased that the V&A has acquired these pots. They were made collaboratively with people from all walks of life, for Britain’s mantlepiece. They will look magnificent at the V&A, a museum I am very fond of, where they can be seen by anyone for free for years to come."

On why he chose to crowdsource ideas for the works, he said: “I first wanted to address what felt like a huge rift in British society, caused by something that no one seemed that bothered about a few years before the vote.

“Maybe it is a bit utopian to say: ‘We are in this together! We all have a shared identity!’ But you’ve got to start somewhere.

"It’s important to talk to people that we don’t necessarily agree with and listen to what they have to say. The two pots came out looking remarkably similar, which is a good result, for it shows that we all have much more in common than that which separates us.”

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