Ceramics on view in Venice include the pots Luxury Brands for Social Justice, 2017, and Searching for Authenticity, 2018, both of which look at the assertion of identity through cultural or consumer choices and what these reveal about us, intentionally or otherwise. Decorated with images of beaming individuals, blissfully happy at work or at sun-kissed leisure, Searching for Authenticity broaches the slippery concepts of meaning and significance, life and lifestyle–what can be authentically experienced or simply acquired. Writing about the work, Perry comments, ‘the narcissistic Instagram culture is a main theme. I often think that when people go on holiday they want to appear in the photographs they have seen in the brochure... Searching for Authenticity comes from my fascination with the rapidly crystallising clichés of the so-called ‘experience economy’. The global conformity of those who refuse to be labelled.’

A new work, the large-scale etching Our Town, 2022, is a map inspired by Perry’s experience of social media during lockdown, a place that to the artist seems ‘quaint... but beneath the surface it is seething with snobbery, grievance and disappointment. Wherever you go you could trip over a modern cliché or an annoying neologism. Words are boxes and triggers and slurs. It is best to be a wry flâneur in Our Town.’

A new three-part series, Grayson Perry’s Full English, in which Perry travels around England as he tries to uncover what Englishness means today, begins on Channel 4 at 9pm on 26 January 2023.