The cliched stereotypes of British social classes came under the microscope recently with Grayson Perry’s Channel Four series All in the Best Possible Taste. During three programmes Perry went on ‘safari’ through three tribes; the working class, middle class and upper class, to discover our aesthetic taste and the emotional investment in the objects within our homes. The people he meets along the way inspired a series of tapestries depicting the story of Perry’s protagonist Tim Rakewell. Much like William Hogarth’s A Rake Progress, the tapestries show ‘modern moral subjects’, charting one man’s demise from working class struggles to the endangered upper class. Perry says he enjoys ‘the idea of using this costly and ancient medium to show the commonplace dramas of modern British life’. In the end, he concludes, there is no such thing as good or bad taste, just different taste.
The six photoshopped and then machine-woven tapestries are on display at the Victoria Miro in London, titled The Vanity of Small Differences, until 11 August.
