Whilst filming the Channel 4 series Perry travelled around Britain to the places, events and social rituals which would reveal the reasons why we make – both consciously and unconsciously – emotional investments in the things we choose to live with, wear, eat, read or drive.
Cafetières & Le Creuset: An observation on the middle class of Kent
As someone originally from a working class background, but now living in middle class Islington, Perry is fascinated by social mobility and the rise of a new middle class. " This is the class that are most aware of the meaning and status of the things that they buy... they ' re( the) most self-conscious..." says Perry.
He begins his journey in Kent’ s Kings Hill, a new development of executive housing between Maidstone and Tonbridge. He finds a world of aspirational, brand-led taste, with people keen to define themselves from the working-class tastes they have left behind, but uncertain what new taste signals to send out.
Reflecting on his visit Perry explains:“ When we were filming the series, one of the encounters that most haunted me was with Jayne Newman, who lived on a new housing development … I wanted to talk to her because she had bought one of the show flats, fully furnished and decorated by the developer. When she moved in, it even had a bathrobe that the interior decorator had chosen hanging on the back of the bathroom door. She had decided to give up a right seen as sacred by the most middle-class people, the right to express one’ s individuality through one’ s home. The few items she had added to the flat fitted in seamlessly. She said she had bought it because there was so much choice out there and she had a fear of getting it wrong. The show flat had been kitted out in an okay style: neutral tones, unfussy sofas, bland knick-knacks. On
The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal( detail), Grayson Perry, 2012
her own she might have made a hash of it – she might have, God forbid … bad taste! This was a revelation to me. I had spent a lifetime enjoying control over my aesthetic choices, revelling in it; here was someone admitting to a wholesale avoidance of such decisions.”
Perry believes middle class Britons to be those most acutely self-conscious about what their taste decisions say about themselves. One of the tapestries inspired by Grayson’ s visit to Kent, The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal, includes all the everyday essentials – from the cafetière and organic vegetables on the table to the Le Creuset sitting on the Aga – which have been amassed to align the household to a particular“ taste tribe”. Grayson finds that, for all the differences between the many middle class " taste tribes " he meets, there is a common emotional undercurrent: a burning desire to show what good people they are. For the middle classes in particular, taste is a deeply moral issue.
Class on the other hand is something bred into us like religious faith. Politicians may talk of a classless society, but Perry believes it still thrives. It is certainly true that people from varying backgrounds may now identify themselves as middle class, but they are still likely separated by a gulf of taste; as a personal example Perry writes:“ A childhood spent marinating in the material culture of one’ s class means taste is soaked right through you. Cut me and, beneath the thick crust of Islington, it still says‘ Essex’ all the way through.”
Visitors to the exhibition are likely to see themselves in any one of the tapestries and cringe. However, there is a sense of fun threaded into each piece. As Caroline Douglas, Head of Arts Council Collection writes:“ Perry conceived this artwork to surreptitiously poke we Brits in the ribs, and remind us of our endearing pretensions, our prideful weaknesses and, most essentially, our ability to laugh at ourselves.” So whatever your perception of your own personal class and taste, we can all agree the ability to laugh at oneself is a unifying characteristic of being unequivocally British.
The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal, Grayson Perry, 2012
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