Unpopular Culture and Nostalgia for the Bad Times

Unpopular Culture and Nostalgia for the Bad Times

Grayson Perry selects from the Arts Council Collection and BFI National Archive

18 July – 25 October 2009
Longside Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield
Open daily 11am – 4pm. Admission free.

Grayson Perry was catapulted into the public consciousness in 2003 when he won the Turner Prize, accepting his award dressed as his transvestite alter ego, Claire. A unique figure in the international art scene, Perry is best known for his ceramic coil pots which he adorns with subject matter ranging from his childhood in Essex, his transvestism, and his reflections on British art and society. Perhaps less recognized is Perry’s role as a curator. This exhibition highlights this recent aspect of Perry’s practice and offers a unique and personal view of the Arts Council Collection. Perry’s selection will be presented alongside new work made by him in response to the Collection.

Perry’s selection features modern British paintings, sculpture and photographs that embody a quiet nostalgia and restraint. Rather than retreat into a world of rose-tinted romanticism, Perry presents an alternative view of British art, one that reassesses the relationship between past and present, and questions the boundaries between the radical, the conservative, and the radically conservative.

The film programme, Nostalgia for the Bad Times, will be shown for the first time alongside Unpopular Culture. Good manners, afternoon tea, seaside holidays and coal fires - the stuff of nostalgia and just some of the subjects explored in a new programme of rarely seen short films selected by Grayson Perry from the BFI National Archive.

To find out more about the Arts Council Collection please visit www.artscouncilcollection.org.uk

(Image: Grayson Perry by Eric Great-Rex © the artist 2009.)