60s Child

Following solo exhibitions in 2002 at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and Barbican Art Gallery, London, in 2003, seven years after the present work was executed, Grayson Perry became the first ceramic artist to win the Turner Prize. The award propelled him to public prominence as a member of the so-called Young British Artist generation. Global solo exhibitions soon followed: at the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh (2006); 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan (2007); British Museum, London (2011) and most recently at Serpentine Gallery, London; Arnolfini, Bristol (2017).

Throughout his practice, Perry primarily seeks to chronicle contemporary life, drawing on disparate imagery and varied source material to address and incorporate both universally human subjects and autobiographical references. Sociological concerns of gender, sexuality and identity and current political issues are interwoven into his visual language with imagery of his own past, his female alter-ego, and his family. Referencing Greek pottery and folk art traditions, the classical forms of Perry’s vases are held in tension with their piercing contemporary narratives. In doing so, Perry deliberately challenges pottery’s status as a decorative, domestic, and utilitarian craft. The medium itself adds an additional layer to Perry’s social commentary, transforming his vases into vehicles for cultural and psychological enquiry.

60s Child embodies the artist’s complex and vibrant inner landscape, manifested in the present work through the medley of colour and interwoven imagery. The ‘60’s Child’ of the title is both autobiographical – Perry was born in 1960 – and universal, and seeks to confront the challenges facing a generation growing up in the shadow of the Second World War. Set against bubblegum pinks and creamy glazes, Perry has decorated the vase with scenes of a bygone era, incised in stark, bold lines: a milkman carrying his yoke with pails of milk; a miller tending to a hand-turned mill; pinafore-clothed children in bonnets playing with dolls in prams. Floating throughout are the incongruous purple shadows of lurid and provocative clippings advertising bondage and sexual services: ‘Mistress of Pain & Pleasure’ and ‘CUM Worship’. Here, the pre- and post-war generations confront one another: the sexually liberated culture of the ‘swinging sixties’ is seemingly scarified with dark incisions from the pedestrian world of domesticity: an indelible reminder of the old traditions.

Perry chooses to work independently, handcrafting his ceramics through laborious practices and without studio assistants. The artist explains, ‘The way I make pots is incredibly labour-intensive, because I never learned to throw, partly because it’s very difficult to throw a large pot, and partly because I don’t need that many – I don’t make that many, because most of my time is spent decorating them. So I coil them, and then I cover them in layer upon layer of liquid clay, slip, which is various colours … what I like about pottery is the variety of techniques I can use, I can carve it, inlay it, stencil it, I can then apply transfers on top … I can use things like gold, and mother of pearl. So I like the fact that I have a huge variety of techniques to mix and match in one work.’ 60s Child is a richly complex example of this highly intricate ceramic technique: the virtuosic surfaces in the present work deploy a complex variety of additional techniques – from glazing and embossing to incision, relief and photographic transfers – which frequently require several firings.

The emphasis on the handmade, organic craftmanship and the sensitivities of this complex and multi-layered creative process are evident in the present work: we observe the artist’s own overworking in his layers of glaze applied to old firing cracks towards the underside of the pot. Jacky Klein comments, ‘What captivates Perry, ultimately, about both ornamental and folk pottery is the essential individualism he finds expressed in such work – an individualism premised, most significantly, on its handcrafted qualities. His love for the handmade connects fundamentally to his belief that craftsmanship is not just about perfecting a particular technique, but is to do with the articulation of the deep emotional and organic relationship that a craftsman develops with his medium – often over a lifetime of creative experimentation’ (J. Klein, Grayson Perry, Victoria Miro Gallery, 2010, p. 229).