Tapestry is an art form historically often used to decorate the homes of aristocratic families with religious, military or mythical scenes, so Perry plays with the status of tapestry by using it to depict everyday scenarios and characters. The artist’s works are rich in both content and colour, incorporating autobiographical references as well as mapping contemporary British society. There is, however, something problematic about Perry’s approach, and about the view point from which he looks at the subject. He describes himself as a working class, grammar school boy, who may have moved up the greasy pole to live in Islington, but is still deeply influenced by Essex. He can still refer to himself as an ‘oik’. The main difficulty, however, in talking about class is obviously the extent to which one’s own class influences the way in which one views the subject. Is it possible to talk about class, as it were from the outside, as an observer, as Perry seems to be doing?

THE Vanity of Small Differences” is an exhibition of six huge tapestries by Grayson Perry, each of which, inspired by William Hogarth’s The Rake’s Progress, charts a stage in the journey of social mobility made by young Tim Rakewell (a wry reference to Tom Rakewell, Hogarth’s protagonist). The tapestries include many of the characters, incidents, and objects that Perry encountered on journeys through Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells, and the Cotswolds when filming All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, a series on social class for Channel 4. Grayson Perry. The Adoration of the Cage Fighters, 2012. Wool, cotton, acrylic, polyester and silk tapestry, 200 x 400 cm (78 3/4 x 157 1/2 in), edition of 6 plus 2 artist's proofs. Courtesy the Artist and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. The exhibition (16 June–7 October 2018) engages with themes of communication, breakdown of communication, and isolation. The story of Tim Rakewell’s life is very different, however, and has very little in common with Hogarth’s work, other than in depicting aspects of what is now deemed fashionable, and in raising moral questions. Perry’s principal subject is class and the way in which people’s possessions communicates where they want to fit into society. And related to class is the question of good or bad taste and the degree to which people care about it. ‘I think that – more than any other factor, more than age, race, religion, or sexuality – one’s social class determines one’s taste.’

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He is a man at the top of his game — and the queen of nimble social observation in his new London show." The touring exhibition (19 September 2021–30 January 2022) developed by the Holburne Museum in Bath, is the first to celebrate Grayson Perry’s earliest forays into the art world and re-introduces the works he made between 1982 and 1994. So, too, his humanity stretches to the inherited sadness of the upper classes, who cannot live in the moment ever, only in the past, as they keep their crumbling gaffes alive in cold deprivation. I was once helicoptered into a stately home (don't ask) and shown around. We were given the finest wines known to humanity, yet I was shivering with my coat on. No one remarked on my discomfort. In The Vanity of Small Differences Grayson Perry explores his fascination with taste and the visual story it tells of our interior lives in a series of six tapestries at Victoria Miro and three programmes, All in the Best Possible Taste with Grayson Perry, for Channel 4. The artist goes on a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain, to gather inspiration for his artworks, literally weaving the characters he meets into a narrative partly inspired by Hogarth's A Rake's Progress. Grayson Perry talks to The New York Times about his Channel 4 programme and Serpentine Galleries exhibition

Grayson Perry writes in the Guardian and reveals two new works ahead of his Serpentine Galleries showMedieval religious art also provides the inspiration for several of the six tapestry scenes. The presence of religious art is not just ironic, not simply a case of finding a theme on which to hang the narrative. For ‘reading’ these tapestries alongside Perry’s very pedagogical explanations suggests to me that he is attuned to theological themes, and desires his audience to reflect on the role of religion in modern Britain. The television programmes were first aired on Channel 4 in June 2012. In the series Perry goes on 'a safari amongst the taste tribes of Britain', to gather inspiration for his artwork, literally weaving the characters he meets into a narrative, with an attention to the minutiae of contemporary taste every bit as acute as that in Hogarth's 18th century paintings. Featuring essays by journalist Suzanne Moore (The Guardian,The Mail) and Grayson Perry, alongside extensive commentary on each of the tapestries and their making, this book is an essential companion to one of the key contemporary art works of the last decade. Celebrating the power of contemporary drawing, this display at the British Museum (12 September 2019–12 January 2020) explores how artists have used the medium to examine themes including identity, place and memory. Perhaps we might be helped out of this dilemma by a phrase from Ephesians 2:10, which says that we are what God ‘has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.’ In other words, there are good things designed by God which are out there waiting for us to perform them; God has written the script but we have to learn to act it out for ourselves, often getting it wrong. As GK Chesterton put it, ‘God had written, not so much a poem, but rather a play: a play he had planned as perfect, but which had necessarily been left to human actors and stage managers, who had since made a mess of it.’ (Orthodoxy)

Post-Bourdieu, we read Susan Sontag's definition of camp – "love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration … esoteric – something of a private code, a badge of identity even, among small urban cliques" – and began to see postmodernism as camp for straight, middle-class people. Kitsch is fun but employed with a sneer. Style as a knowing wink that only a chosen few can understand has become popularised. Its edginess has become marketable; this is no longer about playing with identity, but simply displaying one's expanded visual vocabulary. Camp, which is meant to be a way to survive, is commodified, becomes just another signifier of knowingness, no longer a radical aesthetic at all. The same thing happens to minimalism. "You want to sell your house, love? Paint it white. Strip the floorboards," says the estate agent. Make every bedroom look like a boutique hotel. Inspired by Hogarth’s morality tale, A Rake’s Progress, Perry’s tapestries (on display in Salisbury from 29 June 2022) follow the socially-mobile life of fictional character Tim Rakewell from infancy to untimely death.Tim’s world is secular, post-Christian Britain, and Perry highlights this in carefully imagined quotes from those who observe Tim’s life. His mother describes Tim’s Nan (who belongs to the cultural world before the great fall in church attendance in the 1960s) as “the salt of the earth”, a secularised phrase from the Sermon on the Mount. But her children and grandchildren know only one “ritual” which gives their lives rhythm and sanity: a night out on the town. Another small detail in the final tapestry offers another clue: A copy of HELLO! Magazine strewn on the pavement. Tim and his second wife still read celebrity gossip. This time they are the stars: TIM AND AMBER. EXCLUSIVE PHOTOS OF SOFTWARE GENIUS AND HIS NEW WIFE, the headline shouts. Tim is pictured cosying up to his much younger spouse. But inside the magazine, the front cover tells us, is another exclusive: ALAIN DE BOTTON SHOWS US ROUND HIS NEW TEMPLE. Perry is referring to popular philosopher Alain de Botton who famously suggested in early 2012 that there should be a temple for atheists to explore their spirituality. De Botton advocates “Religion for Atheists” (in distinction from atheists who are disparaging of religion) and thinks that modern society needs a substitute for that religious practice which provides meaning and creates community. Nicholas Rena’s monumental, eloquent ceramics are exhibited alongside the painting of Matthew Smith at Marsden Woo Gallery in London. He is also this year’s winner of the Art Fund Prize, announced at the 2010 Collect Design Fair held at the Saatchi Gallery on 14 May 2010. Fintan O’Toole Pathological narcissism stymies Fianna Fáil support for Fine Gael, The Irish Times, March 16, 2016 The Christian understanding of what it means to be human starts from the belief that we are all created by God and with something of God in us, something which enables us to be, to think and to relate in ways which no other creature can. God wills us to be; he wills both our shared humanity and our individual expression of that humanity. We can therefore see ourselves both as unique in time and yet also as part of the total human community through time. We have many things in common with other people and yet we also have our own story to live and to tell. Who we are is a compound of the influence of significant individuals and groups, and the experiences which happen to us in a unique way because of who we are.