Grayson Perry

Perry has had solo exhibitions at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.

His work is held in the permanent collections of the British Council and Arts Council, Crafts Council, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, Tate and Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Sir Grayson Perry (born 24 March 1960) is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster.

He is known for his ceramic vases, tapestries, and cross-dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British "prejudices, fashions and foibles".

Perry's vases have classical forms and are decorated in bright colours, depicting subjects at odds with their attractive appearance.

There is a strong autobiographical element in his work, in which images of Perry as "Claire", his female alter-ego, and "Alan Measles", his childhood teddy bear, often appear.

He has made a number of documentary television programmes and has curated exhibitions.

He did an art foundation course at Braintree College of Further Education from 1978 to 1979, followed by a BA in fine art at Portsmouth College of Art and Design (now the University of Portsmouth), graduating in 1982.

When he left for Portsmouth in 1979, his stepfather told him "Don't come back".

He had an interest in film and exhibited his first piece of pottery at a New Contemporaries show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1980.

In the months following his graduation he joined The Neo Naturists, a group started by Christine Binnie to revive the "true sixties spirit – which involves living one's life more or less naked and occasionally manifesting it into a performance for which the main theme is body paint".

They put on events at galleries and other venues.

In this time Perry was living in squats in central London.

They have one daughter, Florence, born in 1992.

Perry was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003.

He was interviewed about the win and resulting press in Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World.

He has published two autobiographies, Grayson Perry: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Girl (2007) and The Descent of Man (2016), written and illustrated a graphic novel, Cycle of Violence (2012), written a book about art, Playing to the Gallery (2014), and published his illustrated Sketchbooks (2016).

Various books describing his work have been published.

In 2008 he was ranked number 32 in The Daily Telegraph's list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture".

As of 2010 he lives in north London with his wife, the author and psychotherapist Philippa Perry.

In 2012, Perry was among the British cultural icons selected by artist Sir Peter Blake to appear in a new version of his most famous artwork—the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album cover—to celebrate the British cultural figures of his life.

Born into a working-class family, Perry was four years old when his father, Tom, left home after discovering his mother, Jean, was having an affair with a milkman, whom she later married and who Perry has claimed was violent.

Subsequently, he spent an unhappy childhood moving between his parents and created a fantasy world based around his teddy in order to cope with his sense of anxiety.

He considers that a person's early experiences are important in shaping their aesthetic and sexuality.

Perry describes his first sexual experience at the age of seven when he tied himself up in his pyjamas.

Perry spent a short period of his school life at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford (KEGS).

Following the encouragement of his art teacher, he decided to study art.

In 2013 he delivered the BBC Reith Lectures.

In 2015 he was appointed to succeed Kwame Kwei-Armah as chancellor of University of the Arts London.

Perry is a keen mountain biker and motorcyclist.

Perry is a supporter of the Labour Party, and has designed works of art to raise funds for the party.

In September 2015, Perry endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election.

Perry said he would back Corbyn as he was "doing something interesting for the political debate."

He added: "I think he's gold."

Perry was estranged from his mother; when she died in 2016, he did not attend her funeral.

In October 2016, he said that Jeremy Corbyn had "no chance of winning an election".

From an early age he liked to dress in stereotypically women's clothes and in his teens realised that he was a transvestite.

At the age of 15, he moved in with his father's family in Chelmsford, where he began to go out dressed as a woman.

When he was discovered by his father, he said he would stop but his stepmother told everyone about it, and a few months later, threw him out.

He returned to his mother and stepfather at Great Bardfield in Essex.