Charms of Lincolnshire
Shaun Castle 31 July 2006
The transvestite potter Grayson Perry, 2003 Turner prize winner and Newsnight regular, has cast his offbeat eye on the bulcolic for a new show at Victoria Miro. The Charms of Lincolnshire is based on obscure art and artifacts from the county collections, interpreted in his own signature ruse. Unlike the idyll lament perpetuated by country museums and shows, Perry’s is a more nuanced affair - at first glance charming, on closer inspection unsettling - the sinister lurking in the corners of the rural mindset, Perry’s familiar doublecrossing. So there’s a cute cream ceramic rabbit - look closer - and it’s written over and over again with the line “God, keep my children safe”. A lark’s lure - that strange object with its shining mirrors, used to charm the birds from the skies before shooting them dead. A crown turns out to be decoration for a coffin. A gravemarker resembles a dagger propped against the wall. Wax dolls, suspended from litte nooses. In rural Lincolnshire, Perry implies, innocence is as routinely corrupted as everything else; always his arguable theme. As certain as was the Victorian sun - there is a black hearse and a rusty childs coffin - intended to be “a non-triumphal monument to all the children who have died too soon”. And of course, there are Perry’s pots - bellicose urns with scenes of rural savagery blooming with flowers bearing faces screaming on the petals. Yet despite the darkness of a past where life was often cut short, the show evokes objects often overlooked, an admiration for the beautifully crafted and eloquent, even in objects of death and sorrow.
The Charms of Lincolnshire, Victoria Miro, N1, runs until Aug 12.
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