What to expect as acclaimed Grayson Perry tapestries featuring Sunderland social club, meat draw and more return to city

A decade after Turner Prize-winning artist Grayson Perry visited Sunderland for his exploration into British taste and class, his Vanity of Small Differences exhibition is back on display at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens.

The exhibition features six large-scale tapestries in total, with two inspired by the artist’s time in the city during which he visited Heppies Social Club in North Hylton Road, pigeon crees, met with cage fighters and more, details which have been woven into the tapestries.

Agony in the Car Park and Adoration of the Cage Fighters, which each measure two metres by four metres, chart the early life of fictional character Tim Rakewell who goes on a ‘class journey’ after inheriting a fortune and the tastes and aesthetics of the different social groups he encounters along the way.

On their first visit to the city in 2013, the tapestries became the most-visited exhibition in the museum gallery’s history – and still are – with 125,000 visitors.

Jo Cunnigham, exhibitions, collections and archives manager at Sunderland Museum, said it was great to have the pieces which are so rich in local detail back in the city.

"It’s ten years since Grayson visited Sunderland for the TV programme which accompanied the exhibition and nine years since we last had the tapestries on show, and in that time he’s become a national treasure,” said Jo.

The tapestries went back on show on Saturday and have already got visitors talking.

"These are very accessible pieces,” explained Jo. “Grayson knows how to talk to people about art and to get them to engage with it in a different way. When he meets people he doesn’t judge them, he’s got real integrity and respect for people and that shows in his art.”

At the time of the project’s inception, Grayson’s daughter had been studying at Durham University and he was looking for a Northern working class city which he could study to showcase its culture and people.

Sunderland was chosen as a less obvious choice than Newcastle and its skyline of cranes and the Stadium of Light is intricately depicted in the pieces.

The exhibition is ticketed for numbers reasons but is free to attend and Jo says it really helps to attract new audiences to the venue. It’s also inspired a series of learning projects which are running alongside the exhibition.

"We spent so long doing things online during the pandemic that people are really keen to be back and seeing the real thing in person,” said Jo. “It’s great to see the gallery buzzing, this exhibition feels like a real celebration.”

The six Vanity of Small Differences pieces are joined in the main gallery by a further tapestry by Grayson Perry, Comfort Blanket, a huge portrait of Britishness, which was inspired by a refugee who had left Hungary fleeing the Soviet invasion in 1956 who described Britain as her ‘security blanket’ – a sentiment that’s all the more fitting with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.

This is the first time Comfort Blanket has been shown in the region, and the tapestry is on loan from the Victoria Miro Gallery in London.

:: The Vanity of Small Differences closes on Sunday, June 5. Free tickets can be booked at www.sunderlandculture.org.uk

Portrait of an artist

Grayson Perry is an English contemporary artist, writer and broadcaster known for his ceramic vases, tapestries and cross-dressing, as well as his observations of the contemporary arts scene, and for dissecting British “prejudices, fashions and foibles.”

He has made a number of documentary television programmes and has curated numerous exhibitions. He has also had solo exhibitions at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Barbican Centre, the British Museum and the Serpentine Gallery in London, the Arnolfini in Bristol, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan.

He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003.

The Vanity of Small Differences is part of The Arts Council Collection, the most widely circulated national loan collection of modern and contemporary British art.

The tapestries were created while Grayson was filming the 2012 Channel 4 documentary All in the Best Possible Taste. They are inspired by 18th century writer William Hogarth's moral tale A Rake’s Progress which follows Tom Rakewell, a young man who inherits a fortune, but fritters it away on sex, drinking and gambling.

The exhibition is the last to be presented at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens as part of Sunderland Culture’s partnership in the prestigious Arts Council Collection National Partners Programme.