Grayson’s Art Club was a brilliantly and quickly conceived response to Britain’s pandemic-induced lockdowns. The first series covered the first two confinements, the second one our third – though you suspect not final – sheltering-in-place. The unflagging optimism of Grayson, and his equally indefatigable wife Philippa, framed the enforced hiatus as an opportunity for us to get stuck into something we might not otherwise do, and turn to art as a way of processing the unprecedented situation and expressing the otherwise inexpressible. Each series had six episodes, with a different theme each week, and asked the public to submit pieces on the subject with the aim of putting on an exhibition to mark the whole extraordinary experience once circumstances allowed. Grayson would interview with his usual warm skill some of the artists – even and especially if they wouldn’t call themselves that – by Zoom, drawing out their stories and feeding them back as further insight into their work specifically and the power of art in general. The programme garnered a million viewers a week and more than 17,000 members of the public submitted their artwork.
Now Grayson’s Art Exhibition is here to showcase preparations for the event at the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery and talk – face to face this time! Oh, the heady intimacy and excitement! – with some of the people whose pieces will be on show.
Grayson accompanies wedding musician Tony Baine as he records the audio for one of his soundscape tapes; a little loop of actual cassette tape he runs through a miniature forest scene, say, to reproduce the effects of walking through it. Watching the tiny piece come together is – as the Art Club so often is – unexpectedly moving. The chosen contributions tend to snag a bit of your soul you didn’t even know was there. You can curse and bless their and Grayson’s sorcery as you turn into a tearful, soggy heap on the sofa.
As ever, Grayson is on hand to put a few of the thoughts flickering around the edge of your consciousness into words before you can. “They’re so sweet,” he says of the little scenes suddenly alive with the sound of rushing rivers and crunching leaves, as Tony patiently threads his tapes and tends to his spooling stations. “It takes us back to a time when people messed around in sheds, had hobbies … Art draws our attention to the world in a new way. Is there a sensuality to mundane sounds we take for granted?” Tony says that hearing is his main sense. Now we hear him too.
Then there is Becky Taylor, who has very little physical control over her body and communicates and creates her art entirely through eye-controlled digital technology. It is the most compressed message about the power of art to give control over life, expression to experience and to independent sensibility as you could find.
Potter Michael Pennington – more widely known as comedian Johnny Vegas – gives a heartfelt and touching account of lockdown forcing him to acknowledge that making art is vital to him. “I’d be so disappointed in myself if I went back to treating it like a luxury I can ill-afford.”
Lulu Willis has created a tableau of herself as a warrior queen, to stand for all those like her – a full-time carer for her behaviourally challenged son Matthew – who were invisible to the government and left to suffer multiple miseries during lockdown. “What I’d really like is for people just to know that we exist and that it’s a really difficult job we do.”
The warrior queen is on show now.
