The World According to Alan Measles

The second stop on my cultural tour of London was Grayson Perry's 'The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman' at the British Museum, a mix of Perry's own work in multiple media, and items he's chosen from the Museum's own collection.

If you don't know Perry, he's hard to explain. He's a heterosexual transvestite, whose female avatar is Clare, a hyperreal version of a little girl who appears when Perry wants to explore his feminine side. His oversexed Teddy bear, Alan Measles, is used to reflect Perry's masculine attributes, particularly sex and violence. In one recent exploit, Perry tried to make peace with Germany and amend for his boyhood demonisation of the Jerries by riding this motorbike around Germany, with Alan Measles mounted on the back in a kind of tabernacle.

Perry specialises in ceramics and seems to be designing tapestries too. I particularly liked his 2011 pot: it memorialises the buzz words and events of the year. 'Going forward', a phrase I particularly dislike, is engraved on the neck ('Alan Measles is not impressed by the twenty-first century' reads another inscription).

Another striking piece was a huge tapestry 'The Map of Truths and Beliefs' linking iconic sites of human fascination: Auschwitz, shopping centres, temples, Las Vegas, Glastonbury, a golf course and various other pilgrimage centres.

What persuaded me about Perry's work over much of the Postmodernist output was that Perry's got the craft skills and the intelligence to use humour to make serious points about our cultures. Too much of the Postmodernist work is one-liners (a building with a roofline that looks like a cabinet: OK, it's referencing the past on a huge scale: and?), whereas Perry's offbeat way of looking at our cultural practices genuinely does subvert our general assumption that we're fairly sensible creatures.

Word of the day

One of my favourite words is kerning. I've always liked it for the sound and the relative rarity of it's initial letter. It's doubly satisfying therefore that it relates to one of my interests, typography (how I'd love to do a module on the subject).

Kerning is the art of letter spacing. It's definitely an art rather than a science, and it's counter-intuitive. For instance, if you make the space between each letter exactly the same, it will look uneven, because of the letters' different shapes. So typographers play around with the spacing for harmonious or emotional effect. There's a useful introduction here.

On another subject, if you're in London, head to the British Museum for their exhibition of the Egyptian Book of the Dead. I went with my friends Adam and Katie. Adam's an Egypt boffin, so educated my very impressively. Basically, the Egyptians didn't really believe in death and the soul in the same way as us. Death had an initial stage in which the person's consciousnesses were free to wander around during the day, and the trick to reaching heaven was to reunite them. Then it was like a platform computer game: using the Book of the Dead to cheat the gods, escape their traps and prevent your heart telling the truth, you get past judgement to arrive in the afterlife, which was remarkably like Egypt without the manual labour (as long as you'd paid the priests for enough spells and statues which would do the farming for you).

The surviving books are astonishing: brightly coloured, perfectly readable, detailed and beautiful. Another example of how cunning élites can be in organising a society for its own ends.

More museum pieces

A few more pictures. Click on them for larger images, more here.

Tiny Irish heads

Ancient chicken statue

Viking ship's prow

Sutton Hoo helmet

Frankish jewellery

BT tower, reflected

BT tower reflected, 2.

Behind the scenes at the (British) Museum

Not really, but I like the reference. Rather than endure a sticky day in the office in The Dark Place, I high-tailed out of this hick burg for the bright lights of London, where I met every single Italian and a good proportion of America's finest.

Amongst other delights was the British Museum. It's enormous, so I only had time for the medieval exhibits - I particularly wanted to see the Lewis Chess Pieces, found on the Isle of Lewis but made (from whalebone) by Vikings in the 12th century. They're spectacular - the pawns (as they represent the peasants) are featureless blocks, but the important pieces are full of life, particularly in their facial expressions.

I'll say one thing about the British: they looted the world with industry and taste. The rooms - for any tourist - are like one massive crime scene.

I took a few pictures, but glass cases and no flash makes things difficult. Here are a few - click on them for bigger versions. The rest are here.

St. George rescues a Christian slave boy from the Infidel! He's still holding the glass of wine

Detail from a Celtic skewer

Celtic jug - the duck 'swims' on the wine when it's poured.

Celtic pigs.

Oh, and I had a Brazilian, which was a revelation. Such smooth textures. A really sensual experience. I'd recommend it to anyone.

I refer, of course, to food.