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Culture at the weekend!
Nov. 3rd, 2013 07:43 pmGot rained on, mostly, during yesterdays walk and drenched this morning along the towpath. Good job I'm waterproof (unlike my mobile phone...) And then the trams weren't running. Sigh, first world problems, I had to drive all the way into Manchester, still parking (Charles St?) only cost me £2, so not bad.
Then to see Greyson Perry's fabulous tapestries at Manchester Art Gallery. With Eric 'n Deborah and JJ.
They are just brilliant in the flesh, well worth going to see if you can. I love his work and these were just the best thing I've ever seen him do, the TV programmes are worth hunting down too. They are a modern day Rakes Progress but also a comment on class and taste in British society. Appropriately, they were woven on a Flemish loom in Belgium.
The colours are vibrant, garish even, but the emotions he provokes and his sense of humour, is just brilliant. In the last tapestry, where the Rake dies, there is even a comet in the sky (Well, a Comet retailer's logo, the tapestry takes place outside an urban shopping centre). It's all very clever but also very approachable and open to everyone's interpretation, no matter their class.
http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/index.php?itemID=109
One of the tapestries shows a lounge singer, in the TV programme, it was shot in a Newcastle working mens club and a woman, who has requested the song, approaches the stage and grasps his hand as he sings (she's requested the song for a dead relative, if I recall). It's an emotional, almost embarrassing scene. And Greyson expertly pricks any middle class smugness with the line “Do you cry a more vintage kind of tears at Glyndebourne?” His meaning? Don't tell my your middle class tears have any greater value than theirs do. And he's right,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/9321263/Grayson-Perry-What-class-am-I-All-three.html
Then to see Greyson Perry's fabulous tapestries at Manchester Art Gallery. With Eric 'n Deborah and JJ.
They are just brilliant in the flesh, well worth going to see if you can. I love his work and these were just the best thing I've ever seen him do, the TV programmes are worth hunting down too. They are a modern day Rakes Progress but also a comment on class and taste in British society. Appropriately, they were woven on a Flemish loom in Belgium.
The colours are vibrant, garish even, but the emotions he provokes and his sense of humour, is just brilliant. In the last tapestry, where the Rake dies, there is even a comet in the sky (Well, a Comet retailer's logo, the tapestry takes place outside an urban shopping centre). It's all very clever but also very approachable and open to everyone's interpretation, no matter their class.
http://www.manchestergalleries.org/whats-on/exhibitions/index.php?itemID=109
One of the tapestries shows a lounge singer, in the TV programme, it was shot in a Newcastle working mens club and a woman, who has requested the song, approaches the stage and grasps his hand as he sings (she's requested the song for a dead relative, if I recall). It's an emotional, almost embarrassing scene. And Greyson expertly pricks any middle class smugness with the line “Do you cry a more vintage kind of tears at Glyndebourne?” His meaning? Don't tell my your middle class tears have any greater value than theirs do. And he's right,
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/9321263/Grayson-Perry-What-class-am-I-All-three.html
