Arise!! Dame Grayson Perry

Occasionally one can become rooted in humanity, and joyful about our potential as a result of seeing a great play or film or reading a very good book. Just recently a transvestite, known as Claire, re-arranged my mood.

When Grayson Perry is offered his inevitable knighthood for servcies to the arts he deserves to have the ultimate accolade of choosing between being a Sir or a Dame. He doesn’t seem like a person who would care much for the status but his artistic achievements set alongside the deeply interesting philisophical observation on gender , the transendence of stereotypical male and female norms, the penetrating investigation and dissembling of the bigotry of English traditional life whether it be religous, political or social, delivered with an acerbic and yet charming wit are in the manner of our country’s greatest social commentators; a group of extraordinarily talented men and women who are revered yet ultimately dismissed by a shallow religous/politcial moral stance which permeates our country at times. Grayson’s presence centre stage at the outset of this millenium is encouraging. He is so English, so eccentric and so essential for our sensibilities.

Last Saturday, at the Towner Gallery Eastbourne, Grayson Perry, with no evidence of self-consciousness, addressed an enchanted audience, dressed as a Panto Dame; as though to wear a patchwork frock of brightly coloured material, hung with bells, a floral headress and heavily rouged cheeks, is actually the way a bloke should be in Eastbourne on a Saturday night. High heeled boots with curley toes, tipped with more bells, were of the Morris Dancer mode. There could not have been a woman in the house who would not have lusted after the capacious handbag.

Yet the seriousness about his artistic journey was never in doubt. The psychology, the search, the discovery was explicitly and freely given to an audience not drawn from the inner suburbs of London but from a seaside town which is renowned for its conservatism. And it was immnesely appreciated.

Thank you Dame Grayson Perry. Thank you for the empty pedestals where parents, over-ambitiously expect to stand. Thankyou for the witty euphemism for masturbation – self dating. Thanks for the "Map of Nowhere", a copy of which now hangs at the Towner and deserves some regular reference. Thanks for the pots, the like of which we may not have seen since Pompeii was suffocated. And above all thank for your honesty about life, art, imitation, humility and the onward journey