Grayson Perry is a great chronicler of contemporary life, drawing us in with wit, affecting sentiment and nostalgia as well as, at times, fear and anger. In his work, Perry tackles subjects that are universally human: identity, gender, social status, sexuality, religion. Writing about Map of Nowhere around the time of its making, the artist commented, ‘The starting point of this print was Thomas More’s Utopia. Utopia is a pun on the Greek ou topos meaning ‘no place’. I was playing with the idea of there being no Heaven. People are very wedded to the idea of a neat ending: our rational brains would love us to tidy up the mess of the world and to have either Armageddon or Heaven at the end of our existence. But life doesn’t work like that – it’s a continuum… The basic formal design came from a German mappa mundi called the Ebstorf Map, which was destroyed in the Second World War. It showed Jesus as the body of the world. My daughter often accuses me of setting myself up as God, so I made the lakes and rivers into my body. The whole idea of alchemy and a spiritual body fascinates me. I wrote place names on the map with references to modern-day things like ‘Internet dating’ and ‘Binge-drinking’. There are lots of jokey references to ecology and green politics. In the middle of the map is ‘Doubt’, because a philosopher once said: ‘Doubt is the essence of civilisation.’ The image of a skeletal child is like an early anatomical drawing but here the child is covered in bigotries: he has ‘Racism’ on one hand and ‘Sexism’ on the other. ‘Fear’ is in his guts, because all bigotry starts with fear. A light shines out of my bottom hole, down onto a monastic building on the mountainside. The landscape around it shows a pilgrimage scene with people in religious garb carrying funny dolls and backpacks. The map is very flat but the drawing at the bottom has a 3-D quality: it’s like the difference between the realms of the spiritual and the human, or the split between mind and body.’

Born in Chelmsford, Essex in 1960, Grayson Perry lives and works in London. Major institutional exhibitions include The Pre-Therapy Years, The Holburne Museum, Bath (2020–2021), La Monnaie de Paris (2018–2019); Kiasma, Helsinki (2018); The Serpentine Galleries, London (2017); Arnolfini, Bristol (2017); ARoS Kunstmuseum, Aarhus (2016); Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2016) and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2015–2016). Curated exhibitions include the 250th Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London (2018) and The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman, British Museum, London (2011–2012). Perry delivered The Reith Lectures, BBC Radio 4’s annual flagship talk series, in 2013. Other major projects include A House for Essex (permanent building designed in collaboration with FAT Architecture in 2015) and several Channel 4 television series including All In the Best Possible Taste (2013 BAFTA Winner), Who Are You? (2014 BAFTA Winner), All Man (2016), Divided Britain (2017), Rites of Passage (2018) Grayson Perry’s Big American Road Trip (2020) and Grayson’s Art Club (2020 and 2021).