Balloon

Executed in 2004—the year after Grayson Perry was honoured with the Turner Prize—Balloon is an outstanding example of the artist’s most celebrated pot series. Provocative in its nature, Balloon reveals Perry’s critique of London’s art world. Transforming galleries into churches, museums into cathedrals, artists into saints and collectors and gallerists into the clergy, Perry offers a humorous, subversive view of the relationships existing within the commercial art industry. He highlights specific characters, noting ‘Nicolas Serota as the pope, Charles Saatchi as the emperor and the British Council as Noah’s Ark. Michael Craig-Martin is a saint turning into an oak tree and St Tracey is in her bed’ (G. Perry, quoted in J. Klein, Grayson Perry, London 2009, p. 222).

Grayson Perry’s wit and self-awareness are unmissable in Balloon. Best known as a ceramicist, pots have long been a signature form for the artist. Although engaging with traditional methods to make his pots, he pushes the boundaries of the medium by deploying a range of techniques such as embossing and photographic transfers and reliefs. Though ostensibly traditional in form, Balloon challenges not only the decorative process of pottery but also its meaning, transforming the common pot into a vehicle for socio-cultural critique. Upon self-reflection, Perry notes ‘I decided to do a map of my own universe … and the obvious transcription was a map of the London art world. It’s called Balloon as the pot is balloon shaped but also because the art world is sometimes full of hot air’ (G. Perry, quoted ibid.).