Grayson

Grayson Perry may have entered public conciousness when he accepted his 2003 Turner Prize in his 'little girl' Claire incarnation - all satin party dress and ankle socks - but I first encountered him through one of his monochrome photographic works in which, dressed as a youngish working class woman, s/he looked for/mourned a missing child. I can't remember the exhibition the photographs were in, apart from the fact it was a group show and in London, possibly at the ICA or maybe the Saatchi Gallery when it occupied the old County Hall.

I remember being struck by them (a series of three or four), not so much because of the tranvestism but because there was something hauntingly different about them and somehow very English in that they visually combined a recurring social anxiety - the disappearance of a child - with a low-key and sympathetic portrayal of a working class woman. That this 'woman' was actually a man didn't, surprisingly, parody her predicament.

In the same show there were also some of Grayson's pots which were refreshingly unsettling - not an adjective hitherto associated with ceramics. Both works suggested a consciousness interested in presenting what troubles us, not in the nightmarish mode of the Chapman Brothers, but in a subtler more domesticated way, using culturally familiar English formats - the black and white social documentary/kitchen sink reportage, the night-class in pottery/respectable craft object.

Last year I went to the currently touring exhibition Unpopular Culture which Grayson curated. He gave a talk about art, England, museums and culture which was extremely insightful as well as entertaining; as were the notes in the accompanying book. I'd encountered his erudition previously in the column he wrote for The Times so wasn't surprised at his way with words. This, for me, more than his choices of clothes, marks him out as maverick. Unlike showbiz turns Damien and Tracey, Grayson isn't just about playing to the gallery or being 'me, me, me'. He writes and speaks very well about not just 'Art' but the activity of making of it. I heard him on a great radio discussion, saying that cast in the concrete of his studio is the slogan 'Creativity is mistakes' - to remind him that 'mistakes' ARE the process towards the eventual piece. As a writer I loved the way, in his last column in 2007, he distinguished between generating ideas into language as opposed to expressing them visually. How the former for him requires constant concentration, no let up, whereas the latter allows more 'coasting' - once the decisions are made, then the pleasure of making.

I suppose like Jarvis Cocker, Grayson had a long time doing what he did for the love of it before his fame came along, so he's able to both embrace the art world but view it also slightly askance and from the era we're just coming out of - where everything's been spun and PR-ed to the hilt - those interested in singing off-hymn sheet come as blessed relief. Grayson can do sharp mind as well as visually arresting. Dressed more conventionally for the Unpopular Culture talk - in working artist mode I suppose, jeans, t-shirt - he did allude to a coat he had - a long shaman-style garment that he'd wear for certain appearances. I'd love to see him wearing it but it was the way he talked about strange museums and the art of Unpopular Culture that really floated my boat.

I've started this blog to celebrate those who don't conform easily to the conventional heteronorms of western society. They may be real or fictional. Being non-heteronormative doesn't mean they'll be gay necessarily, in fact I'm most interested in those who may be straight but manage to resist what that's supposed to imply and be more maverick and individual. Having said that my first choice, Sara Gilbert (right), is a lesbian. I don't actually know much about her real life, apart from that, but I do remember her brilliant characterisation of Darlene in the long running series of Roseanne. Darlene was the patron saint of girl grunge, the antidote to Barbie and icon of dressed down cool. Her strength was her intelligence and wit. She didn't need to obsess about cosmetics, her body, clothes or even boys, so as such a total inspiration to girls of intelligence and discernment. I suppose she was created in the first instance by Roseanne Barr herself and hats off there too, but Sara's timing of dry wisecracks was the work of a genius. She sent out a message of unapologetic individuality, saying that bright girls didn't have to be insecure. Darlene was never presented negatively for not conforming, she stood askance from the world she lived in but wasn't rejected by it. These days, one of the most common insults young people throw at others is 'freak'. To refuse to conform is seen as undesirable. Yet once upon a time, young people aspired to be freaks, even 'drop-outs'. The eighties began a time of not only aspiration but cultural conformity. Roseanne mainly aired at the end of that decade, so it's perhaps its all the more surprising that Darlene dared to be different.