'Claire went to the Venice Biennale recently in a little-girl dress - a kind of bipolar Miss Muffet, all pie-crust frills, baby bunny appliqué and button-down shoes. 'People ask why do I do it,' he says. 'It's a turn on!'
''Sometimes,' he says, 'I wonder if we live our lives so that we can fulfil our deepest sex fantasies. That they shape our lives.'
In 1979, [Perry] saw the Outsiders Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery and came across the work of Henry Darger, who remains his favourite artist. His subject matter is mainly known for its obsessive depictions of [naked] little girls suffering various forms of torture.
For Perry, Darger's wounded little girls represented a violent fantasy world where children were a metaphor for a sub-personality that lurks within the complex adult. 'My research into him by chance coincided with Claire regressing into her child image, so it felt very poignant,' he says. Injured children re-occur as a motif in his work. His latest pot, The Plight of the Sensitive Child, shows children in frilly frocks taking crack.
Paedophilia horrifies him, but so do the knee-jerk reactions that serve to cordon the subject off and disallow discussion. 'I like the idea of diffusing rampant paedo-paranoia,' he says.
Claire isn't in a separate compartment,' she [Phillipa Perry] points out. 'His compulsion is as much a part of him as his blue eyes.
'Flo,' who is 11, is unsurprised by any idiosyncrasies that her father might be perceived as having. 'She just rolls her eyes.' When asked recently by a friend what he put on his pots, she calmly replied, 'Child abuse mainly', and when her father commented that she was an 'arty' child, she replied that she did no know whether that was a compliment or not.
Claire is also developing a new agenda. Perry hopes she will encourage others to live out their fantasies.
'She' may have achieved a new incarnation in time for the Turner hoopla. 'She has changed,' he says. 'I am no longer interested in deceiving people into thinking I'm female. And I've stopped being embarrassed.' amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/sep/21/art.
'Grayson Perry, a transvestite potter with a strong line in pornographic and paedophile imagery, won the Turner Prize yesterday.
He has described it [transvestism] "as a turn on"
Of his daughter's feelings, he says: "She's cool too, although I don't like to dress up when she's about." www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3608048/Transvestites-shocking-pots-claim-victory-in-Turner-Prize.html
'Does he still find it [transvestism] sexually exciting? “Oh yes,” he shouts excitedly. “Yeah!” But there is a problem, he says, with being a very public tranny. You mean, you couldn’t be seen at the Royal Academy in a nice frock and a stiffy? He nods enthusiastically. “You couldn’t do it. If I could manage it, I’m sure I’d be thinking how to do it.'
'However wholesome they looked, the pots illustrated scenes of child abduction, sadomasochism, masturbating teddies, sweet little girls with penises hanging from their dresses.'
'But why, for instance, the Little Bo Peep look? “It’s a classic look. I used to call it the crack cocaine of femininity. It’s the furthest from the male macho look you could get. It’s vulnerable, it’s young, it’s humiliating.' www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/04/grayson-perry-dress-tranny-art-who-are-you-tv.
“I’m on an up. My life is f---ing charmed,” he says with a touch of defiance. “I have enormous fun doing what I want. I’m very lucky.”
When he started wearing women’s clothes as a youth, it was a furtive, dangerous act. The risk of discovery and humiliation gave him a sexual thrill. Dressing up as Claire is still a turn-on, he insists, but the circumstances have changed. "I like dressing up. I’m a transvestite. So, I get excuses to dress up all the time. It’s fabulous.”
amp.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/provocative-artist-grayson-perry-centrism-is-now-an-insult-20191126-p53e55.html 2019.
"It was being a fetishist though of course I had no idea what that was then. Adults do not realise that kids have a sexual life.” And then came the women’s clothes, which began when he “borrowed” his sister’s dresses.
It depicts an angel-like figure with an erect penis beside Claire, in a dress and, with a halo above her head, patting the angel on the shoulder. “This pot was about my acknowledgement of Claire as a central plank of my creative drive,” he explains.
“Claire is not my alter ego. She is a man in a dress doing things a man does.” And, for the record, Perry never makes his pots or plates dressed as Claire. “That would be far too messy.” His deep cackle reverberates around the gallery.
thecritic.co.uk/the-critic-interview-grayson-perry/ 2020