I was an angry working-class man

‘I was a very angry working-class man! ...The title is important and every word counts. I ‘was’ is in the past tense, in that I hope I’m getting over my inappropriate temper now through therapy. ‘Working-class’, in that, by the very nature of being a successful artist one does leave one’s class to a certain extent. ‘Man’ is a joke on me being a transvestite ... It’s about occupying the world that I do, making lovely, delicate ceramic things, and yet being a working-class man.’ - Grayson Perry

Included in Grayson Perry’s award-winning Turner Prize exhibition in 2003, I was an angry working-class man (2001) embodies the artist’s vibrant inner landscape, depicted here as a medley of calligraphic imagery. Across the vase’s lustrous surface, Perry has woven a tapestry of hand drawings, transfer prints, and decorative motifs, all of which riff on more conventional decorative art subjects. In a delicate palette of dusty pink, pale violet and shimmering gold, I was an angry working-class man reveals a pictorial opera drawn from a working-class iconography; the work’s title combines references to the artist’s own psychological, sexual, and economic background. Using traditional chinoiserie methods, Perry upends what he has described as ‘the apotheosis of the English middle-class drawing room aesthetic’ (G. Perry, quoted in J. Klein, Grayson Perry, London 2009, p. 44). In challenging ceramic’s status as a purely decorative and domestic medium, the vase presents a poignant self-portrait that reflects Perry’s own multifaceted identity.