Grayson Perry - the early years
Amol Rajan discusses youthful opportunity and the barriers to social mobility with Grayson Perry, Hashi Mohamed and Theresa Lola.
The artist Grayson Perry turns to his formative years in a new exhibition of early works, The Pre-Therapy Years. He tells Amol Rajan about the ideas and influences that helped lay the foundations for his work, and about the emergence of his own identity as 鈥榯he Transvestite Potter鈥�.
Hashi Mohamed has a very different story of success: he is now a barrister but arrived in Britain aged nine as a child refugee from Somalia. He warns that his own path is denied to the majority of people in Britain. Social mobility is a myth, he says, with power and privilege concentrated among the privately educated population.
At just 26 Theresa Lola is already a prize-winning poet and Young People鈥檚 Laureate for London. Her first collection, In Search of Equilibrium, is an unflinching study of death and grieving. But she finds hope and solace in words, and believes in the power of poetry to bring about change.
Photograph: Grayson Perry as Claire (detail), 1988 漏 Matthew R Lewis
Producer: Katy Hickman
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Grayson Perry
Grayson Perry is an artist, writer and broadcaster.
The exhibition of Grayson's early works, The Pre-Therapy Years, is at the Holburne Museum, Bath聽until 25 May, before travelling聽to York City Art Gallery and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich.
Hashi Mohamed
Hashi Mohamed is a barrister.
People Like Us: What it Takes to Make it In Modern Britain is published by Profile Books.
Theresa Lola
Theresa Lola is a poet and is currently the Young People's Laureate for London.
In Search of Equilibrium is published by Nine Arches Press.聽
Broadcasts
- Mon 27 Jan 2020 09:00麻豆社 Radio 4
- Mon 27 Jan 2020 21:30麻豆社 Radio 4
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