Grayson Perry is featured on the front cover of The Guardian Magazine this week, with a full interview that covers the artist’s defiant, shifting public personae, and the early responses of the art world to his pottery.  “Pottery was what sandal-wearing, windchime-lovers did,” he says.  “Art is sensitive to areas of visual culture that haven’t yet been colonized by the art world, and perhaps what they sensed back then was, here was an area that hadn’t been fully explored.” (more…)

Artist Grayson Perry has unveiled a newly designed handbag tote, molded into the shape of a human scrotum. A collaboration with leather craftsman Andy Bates, the artist has only had one made, and has used it frequently in appearances as his drag alter-ego, Clare.  “I received enormous interest in the “Scrotal Sac” from around the world but have mysteriously declined to make a second,” said Bates. (more…)

Speaking on the state of contemporary art, Grayson Perry has called the majority of contemporary art “rubbish.”  Speaking during the inaugural Radio 4 Reith Lecture, Perry began by discussing his own appeal as an artist.  “Although we live in an era where anything can be art, not everything is art.  I think the art world is happy to dig down into the lower regions of society for a bit of gritty reality, but what it’s frightened of is the middle classes with good taste, often. Maybe I appeal to too many of those people.”  He continued:  “At any one moment most of the art being made is awful.” (more…)