GRAYSON PERRY’S ART CLUB — AND NOW, THE MANCHESTER EXHIBITION

Lucilda Goulden-White’s “Generation COVID” (2020), acrylic on board, in Grayson’s Art Club, an exhibition on view at the Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England, through October 31, 2021. Photo courtesy of the artist and Manchester Art Gallery

ART FOR — AND BY — THE PEOPLE

GRAYSON PERRY PRESENTS AN EXHIBITION, LINKED TO HIS TV SHOW, OF UNTRAINED ARTISTS’ WORKS

Last year, as the U.K.’s long lockdown began, the contemporary artist Grayson Perry, who is known for his ceramics and tapestries, his writing and lecturing about art and cultural issues, and his cross-dressing as his alter ego, “Claire,” began presenting, with his psychotherapist wife, Philippa Perry, “Grayson’s Art Club,” on Britain’s Channel 4 television network.

On the program, which became a popular hit of the lockdown era, the Perrys speak with professional artists and celebrity guests — hello, Boy George! — as well as with a wide range of amateur art-makers. About the series, the British newspaper the Guardian’s television reporter observed, “The astounding degree and amount of talent out there is given its due, and Grayson’s interviewing and listening skills — always alert, always interested, never imposing — draw out the stories behind every work.”