Artworks

There's a long tradition, going back to the sixteenth century, of satirical medals that take the mickey out of figures of authority like religious leaders and politicians. They were often used as badges of allegiance to particular causes at times of political upheaval such as the English Civil War or the French Revolution. The British Museum asked me to design my own 'medal of dishonour'. Two big issues in the air when I made this were the Iraq War and the environment, and I started thinking about the need to supply the developed world with things to satisfy our adrenalised craving for consumer goods; the fact that we want more and new stuff. I designed this medal in 2007 before the credit crunch added weight to its message. On one side it shows 'Our Lady of Bon Street', a Madonna figure with a couple of designer handbags, alongside what I call the top ten 'airport brands'. She's wearing hat with coffins all over it, a dress patterned with Mercedes logos and a cape with dollar signs. On the reverse is a design that was inspired by a timpanum above a cathedral I saw in northern Spain. Instead of Christ in judgment as an adult, I put him on as a child. The child is the ideal consumer because he lacks willpower, judgment and experience. The basic forces of consumerism will always push us towards the easy, the simple and the fast, and away from the slow, the hard and the complex, so I've got 'Easy Simple Fast' as the resurrected people who are allowed into Heaven, and 'Slow Hard Complex' as the people damned into the mouth of Hell. The Christ child is 'Born to Shop'. It's quite crude, like some sort of badge or token you might have seen along a pilgrimage route in the Middle Ages. They were the medieval equivalent of 'I went to Lourdes and all I got was this bloody T-shirt'." Grayson Perry - Updated and Expanded by Jacky Klein, Thames & Hudson, 2013, ill. p.121