The Blindboy Podcast - Class, culture and taste with Grayson Perry

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

Grayson Perry is a Turner Prize winning artist who works in ceramics and textile. We had a gas chat Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings, you weeping Sheelas. Welcome to the Blind By Podcast. If this is your first episode, please consider going back and listening to an earlier episode. Some people even begin from the start to familiarize themselves with the lore of this podcast. There's almost 400 episodes now. I've gotten to the point where I can't tell the difference between dreams, reality and podcast episodes. But before we get into this week's episode, let's start off with a piece of prose poetry that was submitted by Hollywood actor Tim Roth. This is quite a summery piece for the hot weather. The poem is called

Calippos are my favorite ice pop by Timrath Blood-rust shadows Creek under a dungeon sun Our love is doved in mud Sunk like a rotten horse Skinned by the dawn We cry for the thaw in the frost. Calippos are my favourite ice pop, because they taste ambiguous. Are they pineapple, mango, nectarine? I don't know. I don't want to know. Don't tell me. They are calippo flavour. When I die, I want to be melted down

into a calippo and all my friends have to lick it and if you don't you're a sissy. Lovely poem there by Tim Roth. What's my favourite Tim Roth film? Fucking gridlocked. Gridlocked. I haven't seen that in years. I'm going to watch that now at the weekend. It's Tim Roth and Tupac. It's almost like a Los Angeles train spotting. I think it's Tim Roth and Tupac as a pair of heroin addicts from what I remember. I haven't seen it since I was a teenager. But I think that's... I love that Tim Roth film and also Tim Roth's performance in Rob Rye. Rob Rye is an interesting film. It's like the thinking man's Braveheart. Although that's a bit unfair on Braveheart.

But Braveheart has been sullied by the actions of Mel Gibson. But Rob Roy, great film, quite similar to Braveheart, Liam Neeson is in it, before he became typecast by the film Taken. But Tim Roth is in Rob Roy. He plays a psychopathic androgynous dandy with a penchant for fencing. When most people think of Tim Roth, I think Reservoir Dogs comes to mind. That was a breakout role for him, but I think Tim Roth was wasted in that role. He's a bit of a sympathetic background character. Although he was recast in fucking pulp fiction, and that was the right role for him to correctly connote his Tim Rothness but thank you to Tim Roth thank you Tim Roth for taking the time out of your day

to submit that piece of poetry about how much you love calippos we all love calippos in the sunny weather I'd love to eat a calippo with Tim Roth that's my idea of a good time now. Meeting up with Tim Rath and sitting on a wall and eating a calippo, eating a pair of calippos, discussing the ambiguity of its flavour. Because that's the thing with calippos, it's a hyper-real embodiment

of what we think tropical tastes like. I haven't eaten a calippo in years, of what we think tropical tastes like. I haven't eaten a Clippo in years and haven't watched a Tim Roth film in years either. I have to assume that Clippos have deteriorated in quality. They're probably smaller, they're probably less sweet. Or maybe I was just a child and my hands were smaller and things tasted sweeter, I don't know. But these are the things I'd talk about with Tim Roth.

If we were just sitting on a wall on a sunny day, eating a set of calipos, and I'd tell him about the history of ice pops, I'd tell him how they were invented by an American child. An 11 year old child by the name of Frank Emerson from San Francisco in 1905, Tim, he accidentally left some frozen lemonade on his windowsill in the winter and he was stirring it with a wooden stick and then he woke up the next morning and it had frozen solid and he pulled out the wooden stick and this young fella, this 11 year old child, he invented the first popsicle.

And then that child grew up to be an adult and he patented the popsicle and started the first popsicle company. And Tim Roth had go, really? And I go, I don't know, Tim. That might be a lot of bullshit. This fella could have been talking out of his arse. He copyrighted, he patented the model of a popsicle, but I'd assume someone fucking stuck a piece

of wood into a drink before and it froze. I'd say this might be marketing lies. And then Tim Roth would say, do you know what I like about Kalypos, blind boy? What's that, Tim? They don't have wooden sticks in them at all. Calippos are a type of push pop. You push it up and what I really love about calippos, it's not just the flavor. There's a narrative in the eating of a calippo. When you get the calippo out of the freezer in the shop, it's really cold. But then your hands warm it and when you push on the calippo, as the ice melts with

the warmth of your hand, when you squeeze it, the ice pops up and down in this fluid rhythmic fashion, which is, dare I say, almost sexual. And I'd say, I don't know about that, Tim, because sometimes a melty calippo reminds me not of sex, but of a dog's penis, a dog's penis when it's in a state of arousal, but that could just be me. Because my, I haven't eaten a calippo since I was about 11,

and I've told you before, when I was a child, one of my best friends was the neighbor's dog, Jeff. And Jeff, Jeff had a perpetual dog erection. I've done a podcast about Jeff's erection before. I have I have done a podcast about Jeff's erection before. I've probably done more of two. Right I'm writing Tim Roth fanfiction now lads. Whatever the fuck is going on. I'm after writing a couple of minutes of Tim Roth fanfiction. Fuck it, we'll finish it.

So I'd be sitting on the wall with Tim Roth, eating our clipos, and then he'd say, wow, popsicles were invented by an 11 year old boy, really? A yank? And I'd say, no, I doubt it. Tim, have you ever heard of a yak chal? A yak chal? What the fuck is a yak chal? Well, Tim, if you want to, if you want to really know about the history of like frozen ice pops, you need to start talking about the yak chal. The yak chal is an architectural structure from the deserts of Iran and Persia that dates back 3,000 fucking years.

Wow, really? Yeah, it's fucking fascinating. The history of ice pops like frozen deserts, you'd think it comes from a cold country. It doesn't. It comes from the fucking deserts of Iran and Persia like before Christ. So the ancient Persians had invented this fucking ingenious building. So it's made out of clay pretty tall about the size of two houses. It's almost like a pyramid but it's like a flabby pyramid, like a flabby pyramid made out of clay and there's a pit at the bottom of this structure. And it demonstrated an incredibly advanced knowledge of heating and cooling.

The ancient Parsons had a type of air conditioning in their buildings with no electricity. And the Yak Chal was the finest example of this. So imagine this clay tower in the desert. It had a way of bringing hot air in through a chimney on the roof. That air would come into the building

and then use evaporative cooling to form ice at the bottom. So the ancient Persians had invented buildings that make ice out of hot desert air. No fucking electricity. So the ice would form at the bottom of this fucking yak-jowl. And this is where the world's first frozen desserts came from. Like things like sorbet. Well sorbet, actually sorbet, it's Italian, but not really, it's from the Middle East. So the ice desserts that they were making in this Yak gel,

they called it sherbet. And this is 3,000 years ago, but like 1,500 years ago, people from the Middle East, Islamic people, they colonized the southern part of Italy in Sicily, and they brought this sherbet technology with them to Sicily but sherbet then became sorbet which we now know as Italian like flavored ice but that was that was 1500 years ago back to 3,000 years ago in Persia and these yak chowls with ice at the bottom they were making desserts out of this ice. The first dessert I believe was called Faluda, but the ancient Persians, they were turning

hot air into ice using this very advanced architectural structure, scraping the ice off the bottom of this desert ice house and then mixing this ice with sugar, rose water, fruit, and basically making ice pops. And if you want to get technical, that's the actual, the proper history of ice pops. You're going back to fucking before Christ in the desert. It's fascinating. And then Tim Roth would be so enamored with that fact that his calippo would melt all over his fist and he'd have to wipe it off on his jeans and he'd have that fluorescent yellow calippo colour and people would think that he has fluorescent yellow piss staying.

This isn't a Tim Roth fan fiction podcast. I have a guest this week. A very famous artist by the name of Grayson Perry, a Turner Prize winning artist. Grayson works with pottery, textiles, different types of media. He's definitely considered one of the greatest living artists in the fine art world. A true legend and a real privilege to be able to speak to Grayson on this podcast. What I adore about Grayson Perry and what I have always adored about Grayson Perry is he takes art very seriously. He doesn't take the art world very seriously. He's always

used humor, comedy, silliness, lots and lots of silliness, while also being a serious artist. There's this sense that in order to be a serious artist in any medium, that you have to present yourself in an incredibly solemn, humorless way, and that if you don't do this, your work doesn't have value, which I think is bullshit. And I've always looked up to and admired Grayson Perry for his unapologetic silliness, as well as being a fantastic artist. So here's the chat I had with Grayson Perry in Brighton,

about a month ago. Good evening. What is the craic? What an honor. What an honour. You've been hugely important to me. When I was a young fly in first year in art college and you won the Turner Prize and I saw you on television, it made art seem like something that wasn't terrifying because you were so silly. Do you know what I mean? Like I was like this person is doing serious fine art, they're after winning the fucking Turner Prize, look how silly they are. And I

loved that about you, I loved that on the one hand you're being lauded by the art world but on the other side you take the art seriously but you didn't seem to take the art world seriously you were very daft. Yeah well one of the first questions because after you run maternity parties you get dragged into a press conference right away straight away and one of the questions they fired at me was are you a serious artist or are you just a lovable character? And my whole career was shaped by that question, because I thought, because my reply was, can't I be both?

And I think that silliness is really important. And I often, I'm a very reactionary artist, so I'm always reacting against you. If I think there's two, and I know you have a thing about the sort of... Solemnity. Yeah, the solemnity. I think there's two, and I know you have a thing about the sort of... Solemnity. Yeah, the solemnity. I think there's such a great quote you were talking about. I remember making a note of it when you said it in your podcast. Because it really chimed with me, because fun is as complex and sophisticated as misery. And there's this whole thing of like,

oh, man, you sort of see all this sort of six former art showing how they're tortured gothic souls, you know, and I always want to go, oh, you know, it's like, because human is a sacred thing for me. And it's a part, you know, why do we choose our friends? Why do we choose our partners? We choose them because they make us laugh. So it's absolutely fundamental to being human is having a bit of a laugh and yet the art world often seems to exclude this because I think the thing is is that the art world its currency is seriousness is because

they want to invest in something that is solemn because that somehow feels sort of the sort of thing you would put a lot of money and effort into? If you can, if you can... Celebnity is a great way to create cultural scarcity, I find. So if you've got a piece of... The areas where I see the most amount of solemnity is religion, monarchy, the military and the art world. And what you're not allowed to do... What you're not allowed to do... They're're not allowed to do and I'll get it.

They're all the same, obviously. You can't. Like I'm making a documentary at the moment in Ireland about the history of Irish monasteries. Not one member of the church will allow themselves to be interviewed by me. And I love that. The reason is,

you can't allow my type of silliness to exist alongside the solemnity of religion because if you do so then you expose its absurdity. Yeah, but I mean I'm a big fan of religion because... Religion can be good crap but it's the solemn part of it. Yeah. I'm like a bishop I heard about once who said, yeah, I'm not a spiritual person, I'm not a spiritual person, but I have a very strong religious side. It's usually-

Oh, that's the worst one. I wanna fucking hell. Well, no, usually people say- Sounds like a prick. No, people usually say, don't they, I'm not religious, but I have a very strong spiritual side. Yeah, he went the opposite.

And he went the opposite way. I thought that was that was interesting because religion is doing, religion is actually turning up and doing the things and going through the bodily rituals. The ritual yeah. And you know nothing binds a group like in a rational belief so the more silly, no it's true I mean it's the more because you have to put a lot of effort into believing something really daft. So the more daft, the more, like these sort of millennial people who think the world's going to come into an end in a hundred years or whatever, you know, and you see these religious cults on, you know, you hear about them, and you sort of think, how can anybody believe that? But they're amazingly binding, because you have to kind of look inward and into the group for support if

You can if you can if you can have a solemn enough ritual That's repeated over and over again about something fundamentally silly people will start to respect it. Yeah, and they do it every week I mean I used to say I did a show where you know, I got the people to vote my teddy bear as God right Right. I had him on an altar on the telly, on the, I had him on an altar, it was a kitchen island, but it was my altar, and I got the audience to vote for my teddy bear as God, and I said, God, if I had you every week singing songs and here in this building, you'd believe in anything. I agree. No, but I do, because a wonderful moment for us in Ireland there was

watching the King being coronated. Now I know you're sorry, right, so I'm going to keep this. This is just an Irish man talking over here. We keep gracing out of it. As an Irish person, right, it was very funny to watch because monarchy to me is, it's like my great-great great great great great great great grandfather was a phenomenally violent person. And through a series of rituals and dances involving silly hats, I now own like most of Scotland. And that's what I view monarchy as. And like there's a lot of solemnity goes in to convincing people around that and I loved watching the coronation for the seer, the solemnity of it, the history of the jewels. I liked the bit when he just had his shirt on and he took all the finery off and he was just there at the altar in just a shirt, like he was stripped back to being a man.

That was kind of odd. Have you ever heard about the defrocking of a priest? Is there a whole ritual? Oh yeah, it's fucking amazing. So, the process of, as I understand it, the British, well any royal process of making someone a king or a queen, it follows closely the papal tradition of how someone was to be made a pope. So, solemnity is all over how you make someone a priest or a pope and there's

all these steps. But sometimes when a priest needs to be defrocked, they have to do it in reverse and then at the end they're kicked down his flight of stairs. For real, yeah. Yeah, well, all ritual, I mean, people think that these religions were sort of handed to us by God. Somebody thought them up, you know someone thought them up and then a good idea Yeah and it kind of works and then it gets invested with history and meaning and emotion over years and you know They're all they're all kind of just silly things that somebody did Hundreds of thousands of years ago and a lot of the traditions that we hold sacred in our society culturally are fairly new.

They tend to be to be reinvented by the Victorians. Oh yeah, this is a Victorian wonderland in Brighton. Jesus Christ, it's magnificent. It feels like Victorian Disneyland. That was the first thing. When I saw all the orientalist architecture and stuff like that, to me it again, that's another thing for me. It's like, look at these pretty buildings that we've taken from the area that we've ravaged. Do you know what I mean? That's that, but it is that.

It's like- Well, you are talking to one of the great cultural appropriators of our age. That's it, that's it. Yeah, I've made a whole career out of it. Yeah, but you do it knowingly. I don't think the people people that were building like the The buildings that were designed after the Indian architecture were a pavilion

Yeah, I don't think they were being ironic about it, but you you do it in a knowing way I think they were dead serious, but the whole of culture to a certain extent I mean, I don't know if you're allowed to use this expression now But it's a sort of series of Chinese whispers. You can't say that anymore, yeah. Can't you say that anymore? Well, if you go far enough, you'll find a racist route. So, what would be a good alternative for that? Shit lies? No, no, it's about misunderstandings, isn't it?

Misunderstandings and through... Misinterpretations, because there's, you know, throughout history there's been sort of things, sort of styles, and art that have been handed down from one culture to another, or been influenced by other cultures. And sometimes they do the whole full circle and you find yourself selling somebody's, their own culture back to them, but they don't recognize it because it's been through to it. There was a case of some fabric that was Chinese in origin, and the the Indians were influenced by then the British came along and then they made the fabric and they were trying to sell it back to the Indians but it had changed so much that they ended up

selling it to the Chinese as well my Chinese didn't realize they were being sold their own design because it's like you know it gets changed and down the down the history and so it's a kind of, I'm interested in that because creativity is mistakes. You copy something you get it a bit wrong and then it becomes gradually your own. A good example of that actually is teddy boys. So seriously teddy boys of the 1950s were copying teddy boys of the 1920s but the teddy boys of the 1920s were called teddy because they were trying to copy the Edwardian style of the late 1800s so teddy boys in the 50s are trying to copy people that are vaguely remembering that the late 1800s and

They look nothing like they're from the trouble is now we can Google it I know and that has completely killed that process off. Because you know if you think of Teddy Boys having that long evolution over all that time, you know culture, even pop culture, youth culture, used to germinate over a long long period. And now if somebody wears a different t-shirt in the Philippines, they're wearing it in Boston within minutes. Exactly. And it's it's the great, I call it the great blender. It's turning, I mean there was articles, I remember when the internet was fairly young and people were saying all youth looks the same now because they all kind of have a vague

sort of blend of international youth culture. But even like something beautiful would happen in Ireland, we'll say in, in the 70s, one person from Limerick where I from, would go to London and see a punk. And they didn't have a camera because it's the 70s. Then they'd come back to Limerick and describe the punk. And now you have this cargo cult effectively of Limerick punks who vaguely look like punks based on a recollection. And in Limerick, they all went around with, you know vinyl mass and that paint vinyl mass they had a lot of vinyl mat in their hairs you know and

and baggy jeans with rips and they look nothing like a punk but as far as they were concerned they were punks based on this one dude who told him what a punk was like and I think that's a really healthy I love that that's fantastic nowadays somebody would you know Google it and they do it exactly it's like there's a kind of cult of I remember when I was really really into custom motorcycles I still am quite into them but when you look in the magazine you see the Japanese custom bikers they do it absolutely perfect. You mean the huge big tailpipes and stuff the real exaggerated ones. But the detail and that but they wouldn't necessarily be sort of doing anything particularly different

but they would do everything perfectly and they'd get the clothing would be perfectly vintage and perfectly in keeping. They wouldn't be anything wrong. Oh and there's less crack in that. There's less crack in the complete copying. You want to see a bit of flaw. You want to see the misunderstanding. Yeah because that's where excitement happens really and the fun.

But even, I mean that bleeds into music as well. I think of Gary Newman, Gary Newman trying his best to sound like a punk, but he doesn't have a guitar so he uses a synthesiser and events something completely new. You know what I mean? You said backstage that you were a punk for a bit I was yeah because it was I was that terrible sad thing which is a sort of rural punk I know I can feel the waves of sympathy I was also a rural skateboarder we had to walk about three miles to find a piece of concrete flat enough to use. Are you from rural Essex? Yeah I'm from rural Essex. You're

not from Braintree are you? Near Braintree yeah. Did you ever meet the prodigy? No. Okay sorry. But yeah I went to my first art college was in Braintree. But yeah, so being a rural punk, you know, it was quite tricky because and you kind of got it wrong. You took a guesser, you know. So I used to get like an old school shirt and I had a school shirt and I sort of ripped the arms off and I stenciled the word hate on it. And I had this, I remember I was looking, I had no money, you know, but I was going to a concert and so I wanted a dog collar, you know, so because everybody was wearing

dog collars then. And I found this bag, my sister had horses, right? And I found this bag of horse tack. I'm starting to sound like him, aren't I? That's one of your stories. And there was this great big thing that was used to sort of tether horses. They were like kind of horse handcuffs, you know, and they were massive thing. And I got one of them and it was like a big leather collar.

I put it around my neck and it was really like, it looked really brutal and masochistic, you know, and I wore it to the thing and I remember pogoing in the concert and it had this big link of a chain on it like this and it was crashing into my teeth as I was pogoing. But that was punk. But that's as punk as you can get though. But the thing is, is if someone wants to come in and say you're not doing punk right, that's not punk. Punk is about what have you got and what is the energy and attitude that you can bring. And what I love about that horse tackle thing is there's a specific maggot that lives in horse tackle, isn't there? But isn't that true? Isn't there a maggot that exists in the-

I don't want to know. Oh, it's fascinating. We have- you can lift up the fucking, I don't know what they're called, the saddle of a horse sometimes and there's these big fucking fat maggots in there. But that point you made about, you know, thinking there's a right way to do punk, I think that's one of the sadnesses for me about a lot of modern culture, is that people think there's a right way to be beautiful and a right way to do things.

You know, it's like, if you wanna be cool, you've gotta do this. And you know, and I think that people think that if they can get all the parts, you the right tattoos the right clothes the right hairstyle the right Instagram then somehow they're going I'll just go no you're not sorry but also the way that's so you're a rural punk the best that you can do is horse tackle but you're trying your best but by by doing that, you're creating something new. Like one of my favorite examples of something similar to that is, there's this band called Kiosk.

They invented a type of metal called stoner metal, so it's a slow heavy metal. But how they ended up inventing that was a complete accident. So they were an American band and they lived in the Palm Springs desert. And the thing with the Palm Springs desert, I think it's in California, there's nothing. It is solid fucking rock from miles, desert and mountains in the distance. And when they were teenagers, they were trying to play Black Sabbath and they were trying to play Led Zeppelin. And'd go outside their garage but they couldn't play Sabbath and Zeppelin because the ground was so flat and the mountains were there it started reflecting an echo back at them so it was literally impossible to play so they

slowed Zeppelin and the Sabbath down to the rhythm of the mountains and invented a new type of metal a slower metal isn't that beautiful? It is, it's kind of spiritual. If I dare use that word in Brighton. It is, you can say it, if you preface it with pagan spirituality, they'll like that. Class is a brilliant thing about you as well. You're a working class person navigating in the world of fine art. Yeah, I mean, I come from a working class background and art is like an elevator, I always think. You know, you can kind of, it gives you a classlessness to a certain extent. You can go up and down and I meet people from all different backgrounds and I feel comfortable with them. And it is those sort of stories of class mobility, I always find very moving stories like Howard's End,

or there's a great play by Dennis Potter called Stand Up Nigel Barton, that is brilliant. All, you know, and it's about that kind of thing of, that you leave your working class family and they are not equipped to appreciate how well you've done, you know, and so you go into this world which is mainly operated by middle and upper-class people and so, but you don't feel right there and so you're kind of marooned in a kind of no-man's land to a certain

extent and I think that that can be a sort of very class is loaded with emotion you know and I found that when I made my series about class all those years ago it was you know people reacted to it really emotionally because they suddenly they realized all the kind of structures of their life their their culture, but they weren't aware of them. And when they had them named and talked about in front of them, I was talking about the granny's things in her front room

or going out on a night out in Sunderland or whatever. People loved me kind of speaking about it as reverently as if I was speaking about some tribal ritual in the Amazon rainforest and I you know I remember saying you know like middle-class people if this if they were seeing a kind of hot car meet in and they happen to be in Latin America they'd be like taking loads of Instagrams of it go I saw this amazing ritual when I was on holiday but it's happening around the road from them and they think it's awful and trashy. If it's, you know, I think it's often we don't appreciate

our own kind of ritualistic culture that we have all around us all the time. You know, there's the things that make up who we are, what our identity is, and they go very deep. I mean, there's a lot of kind of generalizations to be made, but we sort of embody our class, you know, in terms of the way we sit, the way we use language. I remember once we did a therapy day about class, and so the person running it had decided that half of the group were going to be middle class self-declared and half were working class.

And it was really interesting. Just names you know were different then because working class people do have a tendency to get really pretentious when it comes to names. I mean the middle class people have taken that over to a certain extent now you know but in you know back in my day being called Grayson I was embarrassed on yeah that's a big one I never met someone else called Grayson until this woman thrust a baby into my arms when I was doing a book signing and the baby's name was Grayson yeah she'd named it after me how did you oh how did you feel for the future of that that well I thought I've got to be a really best behavior now because I grew up, the only other Grayson in my childhood was Larry Grayson, which wasn't the, you know,

in the great homophobic seventies, that wasn't a great reference to have. There was a fucking girl in Limerick, she's not called this anymore, but she's called Lasagna. So her parents, her parents had gone to, she's like 40 something now, right? Sania, she goes by Sania now, and she won't mind me saying this. Her parents went to fucking Italy in the 70s, right?

When lasagna was a thing there, but it hadn't quite reached Ireland yet, at all. So they had seen lasagna on a thing there, but it hadn't quite reached Ireland yet, at all. So they had seen lasagna on a menu and were like, wow, this is so exotic, and called their fucking child lasagna. She was fine until she was about 10, and then the 1980s started to hit and people are eating lasagna, and it's like, what the fuck have we done? So now, luckily, Sanya, she goes by Sanja, but on her fucking, her passport is

lasagna. But I think it's, I think it's, in a way, it's sweet because it's about aspiration. You want the best for your child. Exactly. So you want your child to be classy. Well, what I found beautiful about it, and I was saying it to her and I was speaking to her, think about what lasagna meant to your parents then. And what it meant to them in the 70s was, this is probably the only holiday we're ever going to have in our lives, we had an amazing beautiful time there and we had this dish that was so tasty and exotic to us and the name sounded beautiful. And that's what it meant then. And then culture changed that. And lasagna, and we fucking destroyed lasagna in Ireland we

eat it with coleslaw and chips you won't have a fucking clue about lasagna yeah that's a tricky one when when the culture changes around your name mmm it'd be like calling someone microchips yeah that's not a bad that'd be a real posh posh person to call that kid. Mike for sure. Yeah, posh person. Do you still have microchips over here? Yeah, you don't hear much of them. I like them, they're like a square pot noodle.

I had questions there, Grayson, now but I can't find them. Hold on. What would your funeral look like? Oh! Well, I went to the best funeral I'd ever been to recently. And it was a man I worked with, it was his funeral, who worked in the kind of comedy music business. And so his funeral was basically an hour and a half show. There was a guy called Steve Brown. Okay. And he'd work with like

Steve Coogan and Harry Hill and Spitting Image and it was an hour and a half show and it was so funny and so moving and had music and everything I'd quite like a funeral like that. I've decided yeah with comedy and Of course why not? Yeah, because funerals are unnecessarily solemn too Yeah, and also the trouble is with funerals They don't have long to organize them normally, you know, because I think if you got a wedding god I might they'd spend too long organizing them. But most vicar's they much prefer funerals. They're more authentic You know, I think a funeral that's got some entertainment value in it, because I love

that sweet spot between laughter and tears. I really like, when you're not quite sure whether you should be laughing or crying. Like I'm working on a musical. It's very human. It's so human. You have to navigate that. I'm working on a musical at the moment. Fantastic.

And we did a run through of it a couple of weeks ago. And the big emotional moment in Act Two is like, it's a real sort of super weepy song. And before the song's almost finished, you go straight into a joke, and a really sort of, you know, and it's funny, it's because you go, ah, ooh, ah, ha! And I love that kind of, ooh, you're really twisted up. How do you feel?

Do you think the English do well with funerals? Well, and now I'm talking to an Irishman here. We're fucking great at funerals. Yeah, I think, yeah, I mean I think that you're not quite as good as the Taraja people of Sulawesi. What did they do? Because we did a film, we filmed a programme and we went off to Sulawesi in central Indonesia and they spend a lot of effort. When the person dies, they sort of mummify the body a bit and then they keep it in the house for up to a year and they sleep with it in their bedroom. Their loved one sleeps with it in the bedroom.

And then they have a huge, great, long kind of, they decorate the whole village, and they have a week-long festival, and a lot of animal killing goes on. It was not for the squeamish, I tell you, it was ankle-deep in pig's blood, this one. Wow. And there's me filming it, thinking,

we're really out on the edge here really out in the middle of nowhere and Suddenly this sort of tourist group comes through with their mobile fans like this, you know, all in matching sarongs But yeah, then when they finally buried the person in a tomb and they dig them up once Once a year and redress them. Yes And I've seen that that tradition is now at risk because of how many tourists show up. Yeah, and film crews. Oh, of course.

Ireland, like we're good with funerals, but if you go to a really rural part of Ireland, it's dying out, but people will dance and drink with the corpse. You know, for like we, so the thing, so our traditional Irish wake, like seeing the body in open caskets, caskets, that's pretty normal, we do that, but when you go very rural, see the thing is, is I think how this happened historically was when someone would die the only place that was cold enough in the village to keep the body was the cellar of the local pub so people turn along and they go oh there's my uncle there's a lot of drink and then you know so then that developed into a decent

wake is you're drinking you're playing, the body is there and then after a certain amount of pints if you want to lift your uncle up and fucking pour drink down his mouth that happens and it's normal and then you do the funeral the next day. As grotesque as it sounds it's I think that's very healthy it's a celebration of life and I think the most important thing with funerals is that you're not turning away from death. Like I love this Tibetan fucking sky burial, have you heard of that? Yeah, yeah, they get eaten by the... By the vulture.

By the buzzards, oh yeah. Yeah, they don't have, in this part of Tibet, they don't have enough ground to bury them. So they get the disease to put it on a mountain, a vulture comes down, pecks at the body and scatters skulls and brains and bowels all over a valley and then the young Buddhist monks have to meditate amongst rotting human flesh so that they can't turn away from the inevitability of their own mortality. I mean it's a big one but... Yeah I mean I think people are talking more about death now than they certainly did when I was younger.

I think there's a growing... The wicker coffins. We're seeing a lot of weaker coffee Yeah, and I think it's good It's good that we did because we are all gonna die and you know, especially as you get older you do think about it It's the suffering bit beforehand. That's the shit Yeah, you shouldn't be think about how long you want to live you should think about how good those last or 20 or 30 years Are gonna be and you don't have control over the suffering part. Not that bit about how long you want to live, you should think about how good those last 20 or 30 years are going to be. And you don't have control over the suffering part, not that bit anyway. We do if you're rich.

That's true. In Ireland for years, my ma keeps telling me that like doctors, like doctors used just ritualistically kill themselves as soon as they got sick and no one ever found out. Because they knew what, if they got a certain type of illness they knew how it was gonna go so they just pop a lot of opium or laudanum as it was known back then. Does anyone do laudanum anymore? Yeah kind of people who are into what they call it steampunk. They all do laudanum. Fuck off! Are you telling me that steampunks do Lordnum? No, I'm making up a joke. Okay.

And I'm in Brighton. It makes sense. Which seems like the kind of place where steampunk fans hang out. Do you know what I love about steampunk? Have you ever seen a quantum computer? Of the early ones, you mean? No, the newest quantum computers. Oh really?

They look exactly like a steampunk chandelier. If you saw it, you'd think that's a steampunk chandelier. If you saw it you'd think that's a steampunk chandelier and what I adore about it is like out of all the various science-fictions I never thought the steampunks were the ones who were gonna get right. Look you look at a quantum computer it's a fucking steampunk chandelier. Steampunk is I don't know I want to offend any steampunks in the audience. Oh I do. Why is it so annoying? I just think it's the naffist style. I think that's universal.

I don't know what it is about us. What is it about? I think it's the... Make your fucking mind up. Is it the future or the past? Make your mind up. I think that's what it is, you know what I mean? I think it's willfully eccentric. Is that it? Fucking computer powered leather chaps. Alright, we're gonna have a little

break so you can have a pint and a piss and we'll be back out in about 10 or 15 minutes. Dog bless. Let's take a little break now. For the ocarina pause, I've got my my othorina. I've got a ceramic otter, a little ceramic otter which is also an ocarina. And I blow into his tail and the sound comes out his ceramic rectum. So I'm gonna play the ceramic otter ocarina and you're gonna hear an advert for something. OOF

OOF OOF I have to blow into the otter's tail and then I have to hover my finger over over the ... This episode is brought to you by FX's The Bear on Disney Plus. In Season 3, Carmy and his crew are aiming for the ultimate restaurant accolade, a Michelin star.

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The otter's fundament in order to make the noise. And then I adjust the pitch by fingering the nape of his neck. That was the Ocarina Pause. You'd have heard an advert there for some bullshit. I don't know what the advert was for. Support for this podcast comes from you the listener via the Patreon page patreon.com forward slash the blind by podcast. This is a listener funded podcast. This podcast is my full-time job

It's how I earn a living. It's how I rent out my office. It's how I pay all my bills It's how I have the time and space to fail to deliver a podcast each week. So if this podcast brings you marth, merriment, enjoyment, whatever, please consider paying me for that work. But if you can't afford it, don't worry about it. You can listen for free because the person who is paying is paying for you to listen for free. Everybody gets a podcast and I get to earn a living. It's a wonderful model based on kindness and soundness. I don't really have any gigs to plug because I'm having a relaxing summer. I want to pursue mindfulness. I want

to cultivate emotions of calmness and serenity. I want to focus just on this podcast that I adore so I don't really have any headline gigs until September on the 15th where I'm in the Cork Opera House down in Cork as part of the Cork Podcast Festival. So come to that if you're down in Cork. So let's get back to the wonderful chat with the fantastic Grace and Perry. I hope you all had a wonderful piss and a pint. What do you drink in Brighton? What's the one pint that everybody would drink? Zoacca? Is that a kind of a modern beer?

You don't have anything that's a heritage? Like what? Are you all from Brighton? Are you people from London who live in Brighton? Tipperary! I love asking a crowd a question. Yeah, because you can make up the answer yourself. Absolutely, yeah. No, I fucking nearly caused a riot in Nottingham by asking them what their drink was and they didn't have an answer. Like in Ireland if you say to people what's the drink, it's like Guinness. That's what your dad drank, that's

what your fucking... But they didn't have it in Nottingham. Something I'd love to know about is... So costume is very important to what you do but how much is that related to your practice? Would you ever consider yourself to be a living sculpture? But in the Gilbert and George way, you know what I mean? No. I mean I started dressing up because it turned me on when I was about 11 or 12. Mm-hmm. You know, so it's a fetish thing and then it, hey, yeah, fetish pride! But yeah, so, and then it kind of, you know, I sort of, because, you know, like it sort of bled into my work, you know, from my very, very first piece of ceramic was called Kinky Sex

that I made in evening classes. And so I was completely open about it from the get-go. It sort of bled into my work because you know when you're a young man you know you're sort of fuelled by kind of testosterone and... Perpetual horns. Exactly, yeah. I mean you're chained to a to a sort of wild ape between your legs. Mm-hmm and and so that you know, the whole sort of sexual fetish thing really bled into my especially my early work and Then when I sort of got more confident I was dressing up in it and I was doing a lot more sort of wearing more interesting clothes and then it became lot more sort of wearing more interesting clothes and then it became kind of a thing

that people expected to see me out of an evening dressed up if I went to an opening or a party or something. What are you dressed as tonight? I'm dressed as a person from Brighton. You look like an apocalyptic toddler. Yeah, there you go. I think that's what, isn't that the name of your local football team? Something I admire about your, what I fucking love about your work is you're operating in a fine art space, but you're taking a lot from things that are considered to be design like you've got ceramics yeah textiles you made a fucking house these are all like in an academic sense if you're in college these are design I think one of the interesting things you know that we live in a very polarized world now and I said so I think the middle ground is often sort of frowned upon.

I often tell people I'm a radical centrist you know and that really winds about. It's like the worst thing you could possibly be. And I think why? So when I made pottery you know it was sort of like craft was something that they did you know that was suburban so if you imagine contemporary art with all of its kind of cutting-edge political issues and difficult aesthetic kind of movements then that is like the city and then if you think of older and traditional art it's like the countryside when you drive through suburbia on your way between the two, they never stop there and so I was

always interested in those things that were a bit naff. But they aren't given any cultural value by the artistic release. No, so that was one of the reasons I like pottery was because it got a reaction, you know, and the reaction was kind of meh. Even when I was when I was I was you know exhibiting for the Turner Prize one of the reviews Said these are just pots As I'm getting I'm getting reaction here. You know this is good If the while they keep writing things like that that's gonna keep me going I was interested and so when I sort of This friend he's he

Friend now he wasn't when he emailed me, you know, can we make a musical of your life? I was like, yes, a musical, that's, you know, the art world will have trouble with that because if, you know, if Gerhard Richter or Anthony Gormley was going to make a musical presentation of their life, it would be a five-hour minimalist opera set in a German disused airport. You know, but I thought I'm gonna make a popular musical with laughs and tears. Well The other thing as well is

Let's just say right, okay, there's Grayson Perry the fine artist, okay, and you're trying to maintain integrity with the artie farties. Something that's very dangerous to that integrity is celebrity. You can't do the two of them. You're doing, like how do you fucking present TV and then go and be respected? Do you know what I'm trying to get at? Maybe I'm trying to make popularity cool. That is the most hipsterist thing I'm trying to make popularity cool. That is the most hipsterest thing I've ever heard in my life. That's fucking great I'm trying to make popularity cool. Well one of the things is whenever I used to sort of see

things like X Factor and Simon Cowell and I thought I think he genuinely likes that music you know and I would think you know and that's why he was successful is because he was genuinely into that he wasn't pretending to like it as a cold-hearted business man. There's an authenticity to it I've thought about that once I met him. I think you're blessed if you've got popular taste. Oh very much so there's this band in Ireland have you ever heard of the script? Yeah yeah he was one of the judges on one of those sort of competitions, wasn't he, yeah? So I met that dude once, you know?

And I don't particularly, as a musical snob, I would not be rating the script very heavily, but I had a conversation with him, and this dude was really into Michael Bolton. He was like, I grew up listening to Michael Bolton, this is the best. And for like, I grew up listening to Michael Bolton, this is the best. And for me I was confronted with, you're a fucking real artist then. Like if what you love is, if you're doing what you love, Jedward are another example. No, no.

I love Jedward because I tell you something brilliant about Jedward, like those men are in their 30s now. Those men, those men are in their 30s. They're significantly older than Kurt Cobain. If one of them was going out with Kurt Cobain, people would have a problem with it, there'd be an age gap relationship. They're fucking 33. But what I adore about Jedward is they have... They would have very little cultural value. They would be seen as throwaway. They're like a McDonald's rapper beside a bin. People view it that way.

Jedward are as authentic as fuck. They have never changed. That's exactly who they are. They're doing their thing and it's Jedward and they are cool as fuck. Yeah. Because they're not, they don't care what anyone thinks. This is what we do. I'm John, he's Edward, we're the Portmento. The Jedward revival starts here. But I think you're onto something interesting in that, you know, but you do come out the other side because I remember one of my kind of formative moments when I was at art college was this friend of mine she sort of said oh let's go and put on some ABBA

on the jukebox because we had jukeboxes you put coins in that played records very uncool at the time yeah and ABBA was really uncool and she sort of said it kind of like half ironically but also sort of like you're allowed to like Abba you know and that was the first time I'd heard someone speak like that and of course now Abba you know it's really Abba are just like this universally lauded great band. They went so Abba were uncool in the 70s, then they got too mainstream in the 2000s, and now they're ironically cool again.

Have you been to Voyage though? No, what's that? The thing in London, the kind of 3D holographic show, it's fantastic. They said it's full of people my age. You sort of go there and you have a couple of G&Ts and it is fantastic. It's like like fuck, you

know, Glastonbury. It's Glastonbury for people with Very good lavatories. I fucking, Abba are great songwriters. I don't give a shit what anyone says. Oh God, the day before you came is probably in my top 10 old time songs. So you had to hold that as a big secret while you were listening to punk? No, no, no, no, when I was a punk they were the devil incarnate when I was a punk because I was going along with the thing you know I hadn't fully developed my own kind of authentic taste. Did you ever get into the rave scene or anything? No I was just that bit or two old I think. I went my nightclubbing came to an end just before ecstasy hit the clubs big. Do you ever do ecstasy? Now I did LSD though.

How did that go for you? Oh it was so, I mean, it made me, I mean I sort of enjoyed it and I had a few bad trips but I remember thinking at the time that my artwork was being affected by it. Because I think within me, my version of sort of two forces that operate within me creatively, one I call the punk who is kind of like political, funny, full of energy, young, urban and the other force is I call the hobbit which is traditional, detailed, rural, you know like a much more kind of like old-school conservative, you know, like a much more kind of like old school conservative,

you know, maybe like that. And I found that weirdly the LSD may be more like the Hobbit. It made me want to do, because all drugs, they have a character. And so I didn't want to become the sort of hippie. I didn't want to become the acid casualty. And so I stopped taking it. I see. The people who take loads of acid end up smelling like bonfires, regardless of proximity to a bonfire. Yeah, I can see that.

It's just the fact they probably don't wash and they hang out all the time in sort of squat. I mean, I squatted for a long time with a lot of druggie people and it wasn't, I'm not a great fan now. It's a shame squatting doesn't exist anymore. I think people could do with a few fucking squats now. I mean, it was, yeah, I mean, it was. Jesus Christ.

I'd like to in Ireland, you should just go to London and it's like, no one asked, will you be able to afford it? It's like, I'm just gonna go to some attic. Yeah, I mean, I had a friend who was Irish actually when I was at art school and he was a year above me and he just sort of look got the A to Z you got the A to Z for you young people that was a thing like Google Maps but it was a book and he just sort of practice oh I quite fancy living here and he just found a squat because every street practically you know in London would

have a derelict council property they couldn't afford to do it up, you just broke in, you just connected up the meter and you might get a year, two, three, four, five years out of it. That's like, when you think of art and creativity, that's a brilliant thing for someone who wants to become an artist. Yeah, it was. I wouldn't be the artist I am today without squatting. Because you had all that time to fail. Yeah. In central London as well.

I was literally... I squatted in Mornington Crescent. So when the nightclub finished, which I'd got in food for free and then blanked a drink, I could run home. I used to jog home to my squat. How, like, why was there no police turning up saying get out? Well because once you'd established it as a squat then they had to kind of present you and they just didn't want, they thought it was better to have people in

there keeping the place relatively dry. dry Wow then letting it fall into complete derelict yeah sometimes they would do things like rip all the floorboards up to stop people squatting it but then we had this friend who lived two squats down his name he went under the name fire wolf right just to give an explanation what it was like he tattooed his own face with Roy Wood style diamonds round his eyes while he was on acid. Okay? But he used to travel round in a big van with six dogs and a load of floorboards.

You couldn't explain that to the police. I'd imagine if I was a policeman and I found him, I would assume that he's launching the dogs. He's the only man I know who squatted a cathedral practically. He squatted a cathedral. It was a huge church. An illegal bishop. He ended up squatting a huge church.

I'd say it was called, was he? And he had a wolf pack. You know, he used to live in the crypt. And I went, me and my wife, when we first going out with each other, or even before we were going out with each other, I said, I took her to a New Year's Eve party where he had a bonfire on the altar.

Those were the days! People in fucking East London thinking they're being cool. And then you hear that. Yeah, it's a shame about that the squats are gone because to become an artist you need a long, long period where you can fail and do fuck all with yourself and play. And if you have the pressure of of I have this ridiculous London rent then fucking forget about it unless you're really really posh and your parents own one sixth of Scotland.

Yeah it's really really hard I mean I can get brutal with young people now and just say yeah go and make somewhere cheap trendy because you know artists I always think of them as the storm troopers of gentrification. Absolutely. And so if they get if they got en masse, which you know you can organize online nowadays, they let's all go and rent or buy sort of really cheap property in some godforsaken bit of the country. But if we do it all together and you could make make a cool place. I bet you there's some Thatcherite law that's come in that makes that not possible.

I mean, even when you're saying there about, they would leave the squats open because it was better to have someone in there. But now what we see, because property is just a complete and utter commodity. Like in my city of Limerick there's tons of derelict property and they keep it derelict because they're waiting for the land value to go up and dereliction to me is it's vandalism for the wealthy that's

what it is you, but they do that Something must have happened Where laws were brought in where it's like you'd no longer have rich people going or just leave the hippies in there It's fine. You know what I mean? Well, you know what happens? I think and I've seen it happen right the squat now The police will show up. Oh god. Yeah, now you've got to be quite hard nut now to see And I think that what happens is you end up like it is in Manhattan you end up with a sort of cultural desert you know that can increasingly a sort of monoculture of kind of wealthy people I mean that's happening to East London now I mean a lot of people living in

East London now are just very wealthy and they can afford to live there. Yeah well it's still has a veneer of hipsterdom but you know hipsterdom per se has become a veneer though hasn't it? It's sort of like you know if you, I don't know, it's something that sort of fascinates me because I watch the wave break over. And the first time I heard the word was probably in the early 90s, I think it was. I think I was in LA and my friend who was a tattoo artist said, oh, come down this bar, it's really weird. They've got like old leather sofas and a brick wall,

you know, and it was sort of like a coffee bar. And it was like, oh yeah, it's not like a coffee bar. It's like going around someone's house and then then gradually gradually that this I think it what it was was It was the first subculture that spread via the internet Yes, and but it became global and so you go anywhere pretty much now if there's a blackboard outside you know and there's a bar made out of old sleepers and And then and there's the bar made out of old sleepers, and then, and there's the barman's wearing a leather apron.

But what I love is how these things have become completely commodified now. Like, I remember, I remember the days when, oh, where's my glass? This is a jam jar. Yeah. And it's literally a jam jar. But now, they buy the jam jars from the jam jar company and they have fucking handles on them, you silly cunts. Yeah, I think there's a warehouse, because it happened to the greasy spoon where I go sometimes from near my studio.

You know, it went from a kind of greasy spoon where the telly was on in the corner of the room and it was just tobacco colored. And then suddenly I think there's a warehouse somewhere they go that's called Hipster Supplies supplies and suddenly the lamps were kind of dangling from the kind of thing and they and they were look they were Gonna pretend vintage false tungsten with an LED inside there. It wasn't that posh It was like they didn't have enough money for the poshest hit okay But you know it was like the whole world is edging gradually that way I

Found out instantly so do you remember like when the hipsters all of a sudden started growing these big beards? Now that's gone now, but when the beards were a thing, how that started was, it was as a result of the the Iraq war and the invasion of Afghanistan. Seriously, so circa 2003 the US Special Forces when they were going to Afghanistan, the lads in the Taliban would only speak to men who had big beards. So all the Special Forces had to grow these big beards in order to sit down and speak with the tribal elders in Afghanistan. But then in Afghanistan, the people became very fearful of those guys with the beards, stay

the fuck away from them, those are the ones who are going to come and kick your door in and shoot your family. They then went back home with their big beards and because they were so cool and manly, that started the hipster beard trend. Fucking war criminals. That's a theory. No I did good research on that one. It wasn't, it wasn't the kind of because the other theory I've heard that it was a sort of response to the kind of or the masculine. Yeah. Yeah, you know a kind of sense of authenticity Because because we know men were all like because men were being encouraged to sort of groom and look after themselves

The new man so it was like a reaction. Yeah, it. It was a search for masculinity, yeah, kind of authenticity. Superficial as fuck, but, you know, grow a beard. If you look at that type of mid 2010s masculinity, it was beard, lumberjack shirt, and then an obsession with bacon and whiskey. But that member bacon, like, in Ireland, people in Ireland stopped calling him rashers and started calling him bacon, how dare you? What I'd love to ask you about is,

and this is a silly, arty-farty question, but I'd love to know about your fucking process. How do you, when does something become an idea that you're like, is actionable? It's funny, because I've got this series of slides that I show to school kids when I do talks of schools and I talk about the golden glow and I say it's really interesting sometimes to go back through my sketchbooks and find the first seed of an idea and sometimes it's just a silly little doodle and Irving, what's his name,

the guy who wrote… Irving Yellam? No, the guy who wrote Zen and the… Motorcycle. Yeah, what's his, anyway… I can't remember, I can only remember half the book. Anyway, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, that book, there's a scene in that book where he talks about ideas being like little furry creatures in the undergrowth and they're sort of coming out of the undergrowth towards you and if you if you're nice

to them then then more will come but if you're horrible they'll all go away and hide and so you've got to be nice to even the silliest ideas as you make a note of all the silliest ideas and do a little doodle or write a little note this is a silly idea but make a note of it and then then when you go oh actually it's not such a bad idea now. And then you do another little doodle that's based on that. And then gradually what can happen is it's a sort of marrying of the idea and then also what you fancy making in terms of aesthetics. So I always say, I show this diagram to students,

which is how do you decide what to make? And it's got it's a Venn diagram. It's got three circles. One is what you care about Okay, it could be a political issue could be a family could be anything what you really care about What gets you emotionally out of bed in the morning? And then the second square is Circle that a Freudian slip. Anyway, the second square is circle, is that a Freudian slip? Anyway, the second circle is what you like the look of, you know, so what are you influenced by, you know, what kind of art and culture influences your look, you know, because none of us start from nothing. And the third circle is what the hipsters haven't discovered yet, because that's about keeping

ahead of fashion, you know, and keeping ahead of the kind of cultural curve in a way. And I said in the middle of that Venn diagram where those three circles overlap, that's your work. And so that is the kind of thing you've got to seek out. And then also things like new technology, new techniques often get me out, get me excited as well. Because they give you, you start thinking, as soon as you take on a new skill you think in that skill because when we're using a tool we don't think of our hand on the tool we think of the tool on the material so it's sort of like it's like the minute you think you're starting thinking digitally or you're thinking in terms of textiles or

you're thinking in terms of theatre suddenly you think what can I do with this amazing tool? You know, I think, so it's good to learn new skills, that's why I do so many different things, because I just love learning and finding out what you can do. And I always learn on the job. I never, one tip I would say, never worry about that you're not an expert, have a go.

I was selling my work from evening classes, you know, for more than my evening class teacher would sell her pottery for. Who was buying this? How were you doing this? Well, I was in the art world. She was in the craft world. How did she get into the art world? How the fuck did you go from working class country lad from Essex into finding your way

into the art world? Like how did you get that access? Oh no, we're back in your team, because you've got to remember that I went to art college in 1978 when it was free. So I was going to join the army until I was 16, because I really loved, you know so my art so I was going to join the army until I was 16 Because I really loved you know, I just wait I was a typical boy And you know just did typical boy things and I loved running and I was in the cadets at school and I really loved all that but then I sort of went off that idea went once I started having girlfriends and stuff and My art I always liked doing I always liked making art, I always liked making art. And my art teacher just said, oh, I think you'll do well at art college.

I didn't even know what a contemporary artist was at that point. And so I went to art college not knowing what kind of world I was entering, but I just liked making the stuff. And I was enthusiastic and I learned and I kind of just, and I came into it as an innocent I came in it's because I wanted to make art not because I wanted to be an artist you know yeah and I think that's the difference I mean the difference between being a creative person or being a creator you know I think that is a there can be a difference there it's because it's about getting on with it

and seeing what happens. When you were in college and you're exposed to contemporary art for the first time, what was exciting you? Not even contemporary, fine art. What fine artists were you going to like a bit of that? My first art book, I think, was Aubrey Beardsley. Aubrey Beardsley, I think he might have ended his days down this way actually,

I've got a feeling. Yeah, Aubrey Beardsley, the Victorian sort of graphic artist. I really liked him because I was picking up on his kinkiness, I think. I think he was pretty kinky. And then I was into sort of, so I was into sort of Victorian, the Pre-Raphaelites and all things like that, because you know, they were really good at detail. And to this day, I'm still in, I'm still air towards the graphic and the detailed. That is my style. I'm not into fluffy brushwork.

But then the real revelation for me came when I was at art college, that one of our tutors took us to a show at the Hayward Gallery, which was the Outsiders, which was my first exposure to Outsider art, or what they call K. And that was like OMG. And so from that day on, I was a complete sort of dedicated to that. I remember I went with my wife, we went on the motorbike, we went down to Lausanne and went to the museum down there and Henry Darger and Aloise and Adolf Wolfi and all these people.

How do you like, I've never been crazy about the term outsider art. No it shifts about. It's a bit weird it's like this person here is schizophrenic therefore their art isn't real art. It's called outsider art. Yeah. I get you know I get that vibe but like there's a it's called self taught art now yeah oh is that what it's called now I think that's what they call it now self taught or vernacular art maybe or folk art I still I don't know how it sits at me I think it means they haven't been to art college and they're not

necessarily pursuing a career as an artist some people would even put Henry Rousseau as an outsider artist yeah or Lowry yeah exactly because they're not necessarily pursuing a career as an artist. Some people would even put Henry Rousseau as an outsider artist. Yeah. Or Art Lowry. Yeah, exactly. Because they're not necessarily people who trained classically or they didn't go to art college. But they would have been going to art galleries and seeing other images and they would have been influenced by them.

They weren't innocents, you know, they weren't these kind of just spontaneous... But maybe their intent, this person's intent to create art. I don't want to be a fine artist, I just create art. Yeah, and I think that's what's so attractive to me about them. Well, that's nice, that's more respectful. It's about this person's intent. I mean Henry Darger, you know, when he died his landlord, you know, came to clear his flat out and there was all this art. He's probably the most collected and revered outsider artist. No one had ever seen any of his work. He was in his 70s, I think, when he died. Did anyone get to have a chat with him about this was just something that he did for personal meaning?

I met his landlord's wife once and I was talking to her about him and she said, yeah, I went in to change a bulb in his flat once and I saw some of his artwork. He did these huge illustrated books and they were 10 feet wide. Wow, like manuscripts. And she sort of looked over his shoulder because she'd never seen what he'd done before and she said, why Henry, you're a really good artist. And he just looked at her and went, I know. And that's all he needed. He knew he was a good artist. Do you think it's possible that he wanted to be accepted but was just

terrified of possible rejection? I think what he was doing with his art was he was externalizing his internal process so if you if you look at his work and then he also wrote a sort of 19th I think it was a 19,000 page novel you know I think it was all about a kind of vast long metaphor about his internal. He was obsessed with weather, the civil war, and this kind of Glandalinean slave war. I think it was. And these sort of, and the heroes of his stories were these girls that had penises. It's just, it's interesting there about what defines

the outsider and the real artist. Did you ever come across a fella, Simon Rodale? The ring's a bell. He built the Watts Towers. Oh yeah, of course, the Watts Towers, yeah, yeah. And spent his life just building these towers for no reason, putting bottle caps in it, making it out of whatever, but again, he's someone,

he would have been labeled as mentally ill or there's a wonderful songwriter called Daniel Johnson and Daniel amazing but Daniel Johnson was considered outsider art because he was he was schizophrenic and there's always there's something about outsider art it reminds me of them I fucking hate the phrase primitive art yeah the way that it's colonial. I think it was mainly the French, but when they would look at traditional indigenous African art and go, oh, this isn't real art, it's primitive art. And something that I adore about what they were calling primitive art was there was this display of fucking African masks and Picasso went to

see it and George Braque went to see it as well. And with these African masks you'd have a face here and a face here and a face there and the French who were colonising the country where they took or the area where they took the art from were saying oh this is grotesque, this is like a gargoyle. But really what the African artists were doing was they were trying to figure out a way to portray the passage of time in sculpture. They had a completely different way of, this idea of a portrait of someone needs to be completely still was quite Western, whereas in the African way of thinking it was like, no, when you speak to someone they move, so

why should we not include movement in the sculpture and then apparently that was a huge influence to the likes of Brack and Picasso when they're thinking about Cubism. Yeah I mean that's the story. But it could have been made up it could be a myth it could be a myth we don't know. No no I mean I think it's that it's been proved... What's your favorite type of dog? I'm not keen on very little yappy dogs. No, yap, yap, yap. That's just like, I just think I just want to dropkick them out.

I like a medium sized, slim crossbreed. I'm with you on that because like I've nothing against yappy dogs but like pugs, a pug can die if it falls over. A pug's face, if a pug falls on its face it can drown in its own face and that's not fair. It's not fair that people did that to a breed. A mongrel is like you let the dog choose who it wants to fuck. Yeah. They're making the choice. Yeah. They're out on the street and they're making the choice as opposed to let's breed this thing to fit into a handbag. Yeah my favorite, we had a lot of dogs when I was a kid and yeah they were

the crossbees were always my favorite. Larchers. I'm a big fan of a larcher. A larcher is an elegant jog. Cross between a grey greyhound and a whippet, I believe. Yeah. My friend's got one and it's like a kind of... It's like a twiglet that's rolled in fur. It's like rolled in cat hair. Mm-hm. It's got grey hair and it's really sort of wispy. I like the humility of a Labrador.

LAUGHTER the humility of a Labrador. You know where you stand with a fucking Labrador? Give me your robe, I'm going to lick my anus. Thank you so much Brighton for being a wonderful audience. Thank you so much to my tremendous legendary guest Grayson Perry. Thank you Grayson Dog bless Thank you all. Thank you all for listening in you delicious cunts and I'll catch you next week. I don't know what wait

Enjoy the weather enjoy the summer summer. Rob a dog. Genuflect to a swan. Dog bless. From fleet management to flexible truck rentals to technology solutions. At Enterprise Mobility, we help businesses find the right mobility solutions so they can find new opportunities. Because if your business is on the road, we want to make sure it's on the road to success. Enterprise Mobility, moving you moves the world. I'm sorry. You So You. I'm sorry. So You.