Turner Prize Winner Grayson Perry to Deliver Annual Everson Ceramics Lecture

SYRACUSE, NY (March 11, 2020): The Everson Museum of Art is thrilled to have groundbreaking artist Grayson Perry deliver its Eleventh Annual Ceramic Arts Lecture on Thursday, April 1 at 2 p.m. EST. Taking place virtually on Zoom, the lecture is free and open for all to attend.

Perry is a renowned British potter, writer, lecturer, and broadcaster who explores central themes of humanity, including identity, gender, social status, sexuality, and religion. In 2003, Perry became the first ceramist to receive Britain’s prestigious Turner Prize. He has shown his work internationally while writing provocative books like Descent of Man and Playing to the Gallery: Helping Contemporary Art in its Struggle to be Understood.

In 2020, Perry released a 3-part BBC series entitled Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip, in which he speaks with people from all walks of life to try and better understand the complexities of race, identity, and culture in the United States. Perry also chronicled his American travels in his most recent exhibition, The MOST Specialest Relationship, at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

During the first national lockdown in England, Perry and his wife, psychotherapist Philippa Perry, began hosting a documentary series called Grayson’s Art Club that features celebrity guests and encourages the British public to send in their art based on a weekly theme chosen by Perry. During the show’s intro Perry explains, “I believe that art can help get us through this crisis. It can help us explore our creativity, inspire and console us, and tell us some truths about who we really are.”

With a career spent pointedly speaking about his transvestism and social activism, Perry breaks gender and class boundaries in his work and his personal life, joking in a 2010 interview that, “I’m not an artist anymore, I’m an engine for social change.” His subsequent rise as a television star and reputation as one of the most important artists of his generation indicate that he is an equally gifted artist and activist.

This lecture is sponsored by the CAC Foundation in partnership with the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts. Those who would like to participate can register here.

For more information, visit www.everson.org