"Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur" at the Wallace Collection

I had a lovely morning yesterday visiting the Wallace Collection and getting to photograph and hear about "Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur".

The exhibition is in the basement of the Wallace Collection and fills three rooms plus two side galleries (where the Portraits of Dogs exhibition was).  I enjoyed it and will probably go again because, oddly, previews are not the best times to digest everything there is to enjoy.

It's both a visual feast and an amazing confection of a variety of media and items  ceramic, sculpture, textile (tapestries and carpets) and works on paper made by Sir Grayson Perry RA in the last three years. Apparently there is more diverse use of media in this exhibition than in any exhibition he has done ever before. It has everything!

Just his use of colour - and he is a master colourist - will mean most people leave the exhibition with a smile on their face.

I'd recommend a visit while recognising it is not an exhibition which will appeal to everybody (see some of the links to reviews at the end)

Heaven's Gate by Sir Grayson Perry RA

As always, everything in the exhibition - with the exception of a few items from the Wallace Collection - has been drawn, designed and created by Grayson Perry - or in the case of things like the the carpets, tapestries and wallpaper, created by others under his very, very specific direction. I heard about what happens if you don't stipulate very exact colours!

Heaven's Gate (wool carpet) in the background
and The Great Beauty (oak,brass and ceramic) on the right

Pots and sculpture form an important part of the exhibition

Drawings - in pen and coloured pencils - and pot

I walked in to the photocall with Grayson Perry - see below.

Grayson has no delusions. He'd ridden on his bike from his home in Islington in his Pierrot Costume. If I wasn't convinced before, I'm now convinced he loves combining hot pink and bright red.

Sir Grayson Perry as himself
with a photograph on the wall behind him of
Shirley Smith in her Millicent Wallace persona

He was obviously getting to that "enough is enough" moment for the assembled photographers who always want one more - with the following being heard in a short video I filmed at the end

"My bonhomie is almost worn through"

Grayson Perry was the most generous host alongside the Director of the Wallace Collection Dr Xavier Bray. Both answered lots of questions. Then answered lots more later and Grayson still made himself accessible right until the end of the press view to answer yet more. Which I have to tell you is VERY unusual. The main players often disappear after they've done their set piece introductions and a few questions.

I asked him whether he considered himself an anthropologist and he smiled and said "yes - an amateur anthropologist".

The thing is he was doing all this after a huge birthday party in the exhibition, the night before for his 65th Birthday!!

That in essence is what the exhibition is doing for him. 

It's marking a big stage in his life as he arrives at 65. 

"The Story of My Life" tapestry
which is about looking at art through the lens of the experiences of your own life

In a way, it's also very like Grayson Perry Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, the British Museum exhibition back in 2020-21. Grayson is remaking items he has found and studied and liked in the collection and has found a new way to present them to us.

I had a lovely time matching up the motifs in the tapestry above with the paintings which provided some of the images embedded in the tapestry - which hang on the opposite wall

The Story of My Life tapestry opposite the various paintings
which provided some of the content for the tapestry
- which has layers on layers on layers of visual imagery
Plus the clothing he designed for Shirley Smith as Millicent Wallace
and her visits to the museum.

I thought maybe it was possible this might be the last great exhibition. So I asked him at the end, how long it took him to plan an exhibition and what was he planning next. 

• this one had involved six months of working out what it was going to be about and strategizing how to make it happen
• then three years of visiting and working with the Wallace Collection to make various of the items in the show which are riffs on objects seen elsewhere in the huge house which accommodates the Collection
• (I have a video of him explaining all this - but cannot work out how to extract it from Apple Photos at the moment)
• I then found out he's already "sealed the deal" on the next exhibition and he know's what he's doing, when and who with.

I always suspected he was very well organised and this just confirmed it for me!

This is possibly a place where all artists reading this review might like to pause and just THINK about the extent to which success is conditional on being very good at organising exhibitions - concept, storyline, timeline, venue, sponsorship as well as all the actual items in an exhibition!

The thing is with ALL his exhibitions he's doing a number of things;

• He's telling a good story. In this instance, the exhibition has yet another fictional life history. This one is partially hung around the life of Shirley Smith who grew up in grim conditions in the East End. She is the one with "Delusions of Grandeur" and after a stay in a mental health institution out in Essex convinces herself that she is actually Millicent Wallace and the rightful heir to the whole of the Wallace Collection. The artefacts on show in the first room which he has created as "archive items" to persuade us of this are amazing!

Perry has created a fictional persona, Shirley Smith, who believes herself to be the rightful heir to Hertford House’s treasures – and indeed, the entire Wallace Collection. Through this persona, a series of new artworks have been made – inspired and influenced by those in the Collection – intended to decorate an imagined family home, complete with ancestral portraits, Old Masters and priceless antiques. Delusions of Grandeur presents this fantasy world and playfully explores themes including the meaning of home and how it creates a sense of safety, the gendering of decoration, perfection versus authenticity, and the exquisite and the pretty versus the brutality and pomp of masculinity. And through the backstory of Shirley Smith the transformative and healing nature of art is demonstrated.

• He's allowing people to find out more about themselves.  His theory is that we are drawn to particular items in a collection because of ways in which they connect to our own experiences in the past. His challenge to everybody is to find out what are the things you like the most.
• He's demonstrating how very traditional media can also be made differently. Some times with the use of 21st century technology. He's demonstrating how traditional ways of making things connected to arts and crafts can be reconceived and moved on in terms of how you can make them today. One of the good reasons to locate his exhibitions in the context of a museum with an existing and interesting collection. Most of the items made by others to his design are quite unlike anything I've ever seen before. Yet at the same time, when he makes things himself - like all the drawings and etchings and pots and 3D objects, he's meticulous in how he approaches and executes his designs.

• He's also using AI to create UNIQUE images of himself in different guises and then remade in ceramics which can be hung on walls - and also fall off and break! These will be sold - but it's unclear how as yet.

"I know who I am"
one of the AI images - all unique - in a ceramic frame

The Wallace Collection's significant collection of military hardware gets an addition
- to shoot the past

Cover of the Catalogue for this exhibition

One of the fascinating aspects of the catalogue is it contains copies of all the pages of his sketchbooks in which he created the exhibition before he started to make objects for the exhibition.

In this one, he's also taking the opportunity to highlight two outsider women artists who have previously exhibited at the Wallace Collection

• Madge Gill (1882-1961) - who has a life story not unlike that of Shirley Smith
• Aloïse Corbaz - a Swiss outsider artist who created her artwork inside an asylum

Details of the Exhibition

Venue: Wallace Collection

Address: Hertford House
Manchester Square
London
W1U 3BN

Dates: 28 March-26 October 2025

Admission: Free for Members; £15 for Adults (more details)

Reviews

Note: I've not read these as most are behind a paywall - and I don't pay just to read a review. If it's not accessible via Apple News premium it doesn't get read!

• Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur review | The Guardian (Hettie Judah) 3 stars
• Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur: An awkward, snarky venture devoid of class and wit | Daily Telegraph (Alastair Sooke) 2 stars 
• Grayson Perry: Delusions of Grandeur A Raucous Romp Through The Wallace Collection | Artlyst
• Grayson Perry’s Delusions of Grandeur asks not if it’s great or even good art, but if it makes you laugh – and it does | The Independent