The ‘transvestite potter from Essex’

Ariane Bankes talks to Grayson Perry about his work and the judging of the Koestler Awards

He is currently fascinated by how exhibitions can reveal the archaeology or anthropology of lives, indeed minds; how, like psychotherapy, they can map the human psyche. ‘Of course, in putting this into the ICA we are being artists ourselves: the ICA is the frame, and we decide what to put inside it.’ He has a long association with the ICA — that was where he first saw the sculptures of Anish Kapoor and Antony Gormley, and his own first exhibit was a sculpture he submitted to the New Contemporaries show there in 1980. He was amazed to be accepted then; now he jokes about being ‘Rent-an-Artist’, such an art celebrity has he become. He makes no bones about enjoying it: ‘The art world is a country,’ he says. ‘Are you going to live there, and engage with it, and learn the language, or are you just going to drop in and out, like a tourist? The latter doesn’t work.’ He’s certainly moved in for good: it suits him — ‘Only the arts would tolerate a transvestite potter from Essex,’ he quips — and he’s full of plans for the future. For him the work on the walls of the Koestler Centre has intrinsic value, but like the artefacts he found in the museums around Lincoln and forged into his last curated show at Victoria Miro, The Charms of Lincolnshire, it’s also grist to his creative mill. Will his own work be changed by this? I wonder. ‘It might be,’ he grins; ‘it’s too early to say.’