Grayson Perry’s first commercial show in London for years lampoons the very people who might buy his art: tax-dodging non-doms, Bond Street art shoppers in glossy interiors mags, bastions of the old empire.
Perry is conscious of his own place as a wealthy artist in this dynamic. In Thin Woman with Painting, the titular art collector looks out from her sofa. On a table is a Perryian pot with the names of philosophers: Wittgenstein, Barthes. The message? However profound your ideas, your work might end up a bauble in a tableau of bling.
In a pot called Vote Tory he satirises young political artists, which, he says, means Left-wing artists. So here’s an absurd Conservative alternative: Johnson, Cameron, Gove et al, amid candy colours, hearts and flowers and unicorns. Elsewhere, he mocks everything from trophy abstraction to Instagram cliches. It’s all immaculately considered — every millimetre explainable with that knowing neutrality we see in Perry’s TV series.
I thought about the pots with which he gained prominence: seductive yet troubling and haunting, powerful in conviction yet encouraging viewers’ imaginations. The longer I spent with the works, the more closed, self-conscious, even self-satisfied they felt.
Most problematic is a carpet depicting a homeless man, with a border of luxury properties. It’s about inequality, of course, but given Perry’s privileged position, it speaks less of a concern for the human tragedy of homelessness and more of an amused fascination with which collector would be insensitive enough to buy it. Like much else here, it has tipped over the edge into overt cynicism.
Perry’s art has become a victim of his success.
Until Dec 20 (020 3205 8910, victoria-miro.com)
