Images of the Essex holiday home designed by the Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry have been released by channel 4. The scaffolding has been removed revealing a fairytale exterior, in what Perry describes as a “secular chapel” located in Wrabness.
The house is featured in a new series ‘Grayson’s Great Design’ which is released in the new year. The project follows a year-long building task involving time, budget and aesthetics.
Perry, who has derived his inspiration from the “single mums in Dagenham, hairdressers in Colchester, and the landscape and history of Essex” – is causing consternation among local residents.
The project was funded by Living Architecture, a company formed by philosopher Alain de Botton which aims to create holiday homes in properties with unusual designs. The house features a tiled facade, with statues and images set into the tiles, and a roof with a brass finish.Perry said he ‘toned down’ his original design, created while “doodling wildly and quite drunkenly in front of the TV”.
Perry is also mounting an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which includes, Politician Chris Huhne, a young female-to-male transsexual, Northern Ireland Loyalist marchers, and X-Factor and Celebrity Big Brother contestant Rylan Clark, among the subjects of a new display, this autumn. The portrait of Huhne, whom Perry visited on the day of his release from prison, will be seen alongside those of deaf parents, a Muslim convert and a couple living withAlzheimers in the display in a variety of media by the BAFTA Award-winning broadcaster.
The new portraits have resulted from the artist’s new Channel 4 series, Who Are You?, three sixty-minute films to be broadcast at the time of opening, in which Grayson Perry turns his attention to portraiture and British identity.
In each film Grayson spends time with Britons facing a moment in their lives in which they need to define who they are, and then distils his impressions of this into a portrait. Some of the sitters have become miniatures, some large tapestries, others statues and pots.