GRAYSON PERRY X OSPREY LONDON
A colourful collaboration
Grayson Perry’s much vaunted new show Super Rich Interior Decoration at the Victoria Miro Mayfair Gallery in central London is where you’ll find his colourful new collaboration with Graeme Ellisdon and OSPREY LONDON.
“In our 40-year history, we’ve collaborated with many world class fashion designers but this is a wonderful meeting of our skills with leather and art,” says Graeme. “And it’s been hugely exciting”.
Grayson worked with Graeme to create a bespoke handbag, produced in ten different colour ways. While Perry’s maker’s marks – a W and an anchor – appear on the handbag’s exterior, its interior features a floral motif, each flower bearing a word or slogan.
At the centre sits ‘Vote Tory’ surrounded by tax havens such as ‘Monaco’ and ‘Cayman Islands’, along with possibly opposing mantras such as ‘Ethically Sourced’ and ‘Capitalism is Cool’.
A priapic Alan Measles, Perry’s teddy bear and a metaphor for masculinity and god, functions as a clasp, cast in English Pewter with an 18ct Gold Vermeil finish.
Speaking to the Financial Times in September 2019, Grayson Perry commented: “Commercial art galleries are, of course, shops… My work is, of course, timeless but perhaps as an acknowledgement of this sobering thought, I am displaying a series of limited-edition handbags I have designed for this exhibition, manufactured by OSPREY LONDON, in the windows of the gallery.
“If I were to sum up what I am trying to say with this group of works, it is very much in keeping with the words of our new leader, in that I am very much pro having cake – and pro eating it. In the perverse spirit of the times, I am trying to critique and call out the hypocrisies of anti-social behaviour of the super-rich, while colluding with them and sucking up to them at the same time. What’s not to like?” Grayson Perry © 2019
Created in a limited edition of 10, the handbags are available to buy exclusively from Victoria Miro Mayfair Gallery in London. For further information, please contact the Gallery on 020 3205 8910.