Grayson Perry has always been a master of holding up a carnival mirror to society, and his latest exhibition, Delusions of Grandeur, at the Wallace Collection, is no exception. This is the museum’s largest contemporary show to date, and Perry seizes the opportunity with characteristic wit, irreverence, and a touch of pathos, placing his own work in cheeky dialogue with the opulent treasures of Hertford House.
The exhibition—timed to coincide with Perry’s 65th birthday—is a riot of ceramics, tapestries, furniture, and collage, each piece a direct response to the Wallace’s gilded halls. Perry’s fascination with the collection’s extremes—the frothy Rococo femininity of Boucher’s Madame de Pompadour clashing against the brutal masculinity of its armoury—has long simmered in his practice. Here, he leans into that tension, probing the artifice of historical gender roles while revelling in the decorative excess that once made him recoil.
There’s a delicious irony in Perry’s interrogation of craft and authenticity. He pits laborious, hand-wrought objects against digitally conjured pieces, forcing us to ask: does the sweat of the maker still matter in an age of instant fabrication? It’s a question that feels urgent, particularly when Perry’s own work—whether in clay, thread, or pixels—is so meticulously crafted, even when it mimics the slapdash.
The show takes a poignant turn with its inclusion of outsider artists Aloïse Corbaz and Madge Gill, the latter having exhibited at the Wallace in 1942. Their raw, unfiltered visions seem to haunt Perry’s new fictional alter ego, Shirley Smith—a woman who wakes in the museum believing herself its rightful heir. Through imagined ancestral portraits and Old Master pastiches, Perry explores art as both sanctuary and delusion, a refuge for the fractured self.
Perry’s own reflections on the project are telling: he admits to a love-hate relationship with Wallace’s “cloying” grandeur, yet his engagement with its treasures is anything but superficial. Director Xavier Bray rightly notes that Perry’s work “questions, provokes, and reflects”—and in this exhibition, he does so with a mix of mischief and melancholy.
Delusions of Grandeur is a gloriously messy, thought-provoking spectacle that confirms Perry as Britain’s sharpest artistic satirist, even as he wrestles with the ghosts of the past. Whether you come for the spectacle or stay for the subversion, this is an unmissable collision of old masters and modern mischief. – PCR **** Star
Photos/Text Paul Carter Robinson © Artlyst 2025
Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur runs from 26 March at the Wallace Collection London