Grayson Perry's The Walthamstow Tapestry

Detail from The Walthamstow Tapestry by Grayson Perry

The work measures fifteen metres by three metres, was inspired by Grayson Perry's enthusiasm for the elaborate imagery of early 20th-century Sumatran batik fabrics. The Walthamstow Tapestry, can be read from left to right. It starts with a graphically bloody scene of childbirth and then continues with depictions of the seven ages of man, through childhood, adulthood and eventually to death.

 The Walthamstow Tapestry” is dominated by a river of blood linking a graphic childbirth scene, through the seven ages of man to eventual death. Small images are strewn across the tapestry, surrounded by phrases sewn into the fabric such as a “ship of fools” and the names of failed firms and banks (Enron, Merrill Lynch, and Northern Rock). In the centre is what Perry calls the “Madonna of the Chanel handbag,” an icon of consumerism. Fashion he adds is “inveigling into our minds” like “a voracious monster that chomps its way through youthful creativity.”