Grayson Perry: Who Are You?
SERIES 1 - EPISODE 1
Channel 4 Wed 22nd Oct 10pm - 11pm
Repeat: Channel 4 +1 Tomorrow 11pm
Repeat: 4seven Wednesday 12:05am
Review by:Alison GrahamArtist Grayson Perry – mischievous, sharp, erudite – tries to pierce the white, male, middle-class hide of disgraced politician Chris Huhne. (Perry is weary of white, middle-class men.) “Turn off the politician and try to be vulnerable for a second,” asks Perry as Huhne sits for a portrait.
Perry wants Huhne, who has just been released from prison after being jailed for perverting the course of justice, to show contrition. “Your main crime was your sense of entitlement,” says the artist. But Huhne won’t bite.
These are fascinating exchanges as Perry makes preliminary sketches for a portrait that will eventually be displayed at the National Portrait Gallery in London.
But Huhne isn’t the whole story. Perry studies three other subjects – a young woman Muslim convert, a young transgender man and toothy reality TV star Rylan Clark, as he looks at notions of identity in modern life.
1/3. The Turner Prize-winning artist spends time with people who are facing a crossroads or a crisis with their identity and represents each of them in some form of art, whether as miniatures, large tapestries, statues or pots. All of the works will be shown in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery in a special display. In the first edition, he meets former politician Chris Huhne, Big Brother's Bit on the Side presenter Rylan Clark, single mother-of-five Kayleigh, who has recently converted to Islam, and Jazz, who was born a girl but has embarked on a course of male hormones to begin life as a man.
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