If you’ve caught Grayson Perry’s All in the Best Possible Taste on Channel 4 over the last two weeks (the third and final instalment will air next Tuesday), you’ll have witnessed a fascinating insight into the complexities and contradictions of Britain’s class system; the cross-dressing Turner Prize winner getting under the skin of class-related tastes, and even going for a night on the tiles with a group of Sunderland gals, spray tan and all.
The show certainly has you questioning your own propensity for middle class sneering, and the resulting artworks are resoundingly splendid. Inspired by Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress (as was ceramic artist Barnaby Barford’s The Big Win: A Modern Morality Tale that we featured back in March) The Vanity of Small Differences is a series of six tapestries – Perry is famous for working in traditional media – that depict class mobility and taste, with emotional clout.
Showing at London’s Victoria Miro, ’til August 11th, the mammoth works – designed in Photoshop and woven on a computer-controlled loom – are as imposing as the ancient counterparts that hang in stately homes, palaces and museums; just with added chavs, iPads and Mulberry bags.