After his release from jail last year, Chris Huhne’s first meal was breakfast with the artist Grayson Perry. Now the outcome of that motorway fry-up is set to be revealed — in the form of a new artwork.
Perry’s portrait of the disgraced former energy secretary will go on display at the National Portrait Gallery as part of an exhibition announced today.
The portrait, which is being kept under wraps ahead of the exhibition, is one of 14 produced as a result of Perry’s Channel 4 series Who Are You?, in which he examines portraiture and British identity.
He interviewed Huhne for the show within hours of his release from jail. The former MP had served 62 days of an eight-month sentence for perverting the course of justice.
The subjects of the other portraits featured in the collection, also called Who Are You?, include Northern Ireland Loyalist marchers, a transsexual, and X-Factor and Celebrity Big Brother contestant Rylan Clark. Perry also produced portraits of deaf parents, a Muslim convert and a couple living with Alzheimer’s.
Perry’s Channel 4 series will be broadcast as three one-hour films in October. In each he spends time with people who are at a definitive point in their lives and then uses those impressions to create their portrait.
He worked in a variety of media, including tapestry and pottery. His exhibition will go on display on October 25 and will be free to view. Perry said: “I have always been interested in the things we tend not to think about or take for granted, like our sense of aesthetic taste. In this show I investigate our slippery sense of who we feel we are. Identity seems to be something that is only an issue when it is threatened or problematic in some way.
“I have chosen as my subjects individuals, families or groups who are in situations that highlight certain aspects of being human. I am hoping that they will throw some light on experiences we all share.”
He added: “I think the National Portrait Gallery is an interesting institution, in that it has this duality about it: it’s an art gallery on one hand, but it’s also a sort of pantheon of the great and the good, and I think there’s a tension in that.
“It’s been very interesting working with the gallery, in that I can see those two sides of the institution at work, and I’m introducing these people I’ve done, portraits of ordinary citizens. And I think it’s lovely to take them into there with me.
Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery, said: “Grayson Perry makes fascinating and provocative works, and these brilliantly unconventional portraits will sit alongside the National Portrait Gallery’s collection as part of an excellent collaboration with Channel 4.”
