'It’s convoluted, but what the deluded, imaginary Smith does is free Perry to explore several ideas and themes — taste and status, gender stereotypes, the purpose of fantasy and the power of art — without getting bogged down. More than 40 new works by Perry, about a third of which are attributed to Smith, are exhibited with a variety of objects from the Wallace.
This is the perfect context for Perry, who works indiscriminately across material and form, from ceramic to bronze, tapestry to print, etching to armour, even generating images with AI to overlay onto his pots, or in an unlimited series of framed pictures called Totally Unique Thing, which place Perry in situations inspired by Smith and Millicent Wallace — they highlight the technology’s cleverness alongside its ineptitude (AI has a serious problem with drawing hands).'
Image: Grayson Perry, Alan Measles and Claire meet Shirley Smith and The Honourable Millicent Wallace (detail), 2024Glazed ceramic
18 7/8 x 12 1/4 x 12 1/4 in
