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2016.18
A Perfect Match - Essex House Tapestries: the Life of Julie Cope (2016.18)
Catalogue Record
Collection
Maker
Factum Arte
Flanders Tapestries
Grayson Perry
Flanders Tapestries
Grayson Perry
Title
A Perfect Match - Essex House Tapestries: the Life of Julie Cope
Date
2015
Description
One of a pair of tapestries designed and created for Grayson Perry's House for Essex project.
This tapestry depicts the key events in the early life of Perry's fictional character Julie Cope: from her birth during the Canvey Island floods of 1953, through her teenage years in Basildon, to an ultimately doomed relationship with her first husband Dave. The deceptive picture-perfect family portrait in the centre reveals troubling signs of the future breakdown of her marriage.
Perry created this rich visual story on a computer. He then worked closely with a digital mediator and tapestry weavers to translate the vivid 1970s colour palette of his original digital drawings into a woven textile. Like an Impressionist painter, he maintains the vibrancy of the palette through a combination of woven colours that are blended by the viewer’s eye.
Edition 4 of 9.
This tapestry depicts the key events in the early life of Perry's fictional character Julie Cope: from her birth during the Canvey Island floods of 1953, through her teenage years in Basildon, to an ultimately doomed relationship with her first husband Dave. The deceptive picture-perfect family portrait in the centre reveals troubling signs of the future breakdown of her marriage.
Perry created this rich visual story on a computer. He then worked closely with a digital mediator and tapestry weavers to translate the vivid 1970s colour palette of his original digital drawings into a woven textile. Like an Impressionist painter, he maintains the vibrancy of the palette through a combination of woven colours that are blended by the viewer’s eye.
Edition 4 of 9.
Dimensions
height (whole object): 290cm
width (whole object): 340cm
Object number
2016.18
Category
References
Credit
'Essex House Tapestries: the Life of Julie Cope' (2015) were acquired with Art Fund support (with a contribution from The Wolfson Foundation) and a donation from Maylis and James Grand.
On view
Short term loan out - 'Grayson Perry: A Temple for Everyone', Charleston in Lewes (25 Sept 2024–2 March 2025)
Maker's statement
[The tapestries] are the condensed life of a fairly ordinary Essex Woman set mainly in the second half of the twentieth century. The way the world is going in fifty years time many may find Julie’s life that we see as fairly ordinary as one of plentiful opportunity and exceptional wealth!