Channel 4 bolsters arts coverage, commissioning new work from artists

29 November 2011

Channel 4 has commissioned artist Grayson Perry to present a three-part documentary series (3x60) exploring British taste. He will then use the experience as the inspiration for a major new work comprising a set of six tapestries that will tour nationwide.

Continuing its work with artists, Channel 4 Arts has commissioned a host of creative talent to make new works for the Channel's recently launched arts strand Random Acts, including musician Ghostpoet, 2011 Turner Prize nominees George Shaw and Hilary Lloyd, artist David Shrigley and conceptual and performance artist Francis Alys.

Commenting on the commissions, Tabitha Jackson, Channel 4's commissioning editor for arts, said: "I want our arts output to contain films with artists rather than about artists, to be about using artists as guides rather than simply offering guides to artists. This is the spine of our on-going mission - to try to reassert television as an artistically vibrant and experimental medium and use it to get the truth of what it is like to be us."

Channel 4 also announced it aims to build on the success of 2011's Street Summer, a season of programming celebrating urban culture, from music and dance through to street art and graffiti. A new season of arts programmes will air in the summer of 2012, the details of which will be revealed in the spring. Street Summer included a night of programming curated by street artist Banksy, specially commissioned performance piece One Man Walking and the feature-length urban sports film Concrete Circus. Across four nights Street Summer attracted a significantly younger, more upscale audience demographic than the slot averages.

Upcoming arts series and specials include Matthew Bourne's Christmas, a new film from dancer and choreographer Matthew Bourne, which is part of a Dancing Around the World Special on More4 that also includes films from the BalletBoyz and Akram Khan; a series exploring the growing field of neuroaesthetics presented by Channel 4 News Culture Editor Matt Cain, called What Makes a Masterpiece; and the television premier of Clio Bernard's The Arbor which was co-commissioned with Artangel and The Jerwood Foundation.

Next month Channel 4 will celebrate 20 years of the Tuner Prize on 4, with a half-hour live show for the Turner Prize, presented by Lauren Laverne, as well as an hour-long special on More4,  Vic Reeves' Turner Prize Moments.

Channel 4 arts has also co-commissioned two films with Film 4: Dreams of a Life, and The Perverts Guide to Ideology.

About Grayson Perry on Taste and Class
Written and presented by Grayson Perry, Taste is a highly personal exploration of one of the trickiest and most socially fraught of topics: taste.

Each programme in the series explores the taste of a different social class, with episodes on Working Class Taste, Middle Class Taste and Upper Class Taste. For each programme, Perry has immersed himself with each of what he calls the "taste tribes of Britain" for a fortnight in turn, experiencing the tastes and lifestyle of working-class people in Sunderland, the middle-classes in the Tunbridge Wells area, and the upper-class denizens of the stately homes and manor-houses of the Cotswolds.

Grayson Perry said: "The relationship between our taste and our social background is the elephant in the room of British social life, and I wanted to explore this in an inclusive and non-judgemental way. I came to art from a working class culture. I spent thirty years building up and honing my North London middle class prejudices about other people's bad taste. Now I have taken those prejudices on safari with me to meet the various tribes that make up British class system. Taste runs deep and it been a fascinating and often emotional experience for me. Everywhere I have encountered unconscious facets of myself, in a sublime country house view, on a bourgeois kitchen shelf and on a night out with the girls in Sunderland." 

In response to what he has discovered on his travels, Perry will create a landmark artwork, a series of six large (2m x 4m) tapestries - two for each programme - on the theme of British taste. When the tapestries are completed, all of the contributors Grayson has encountered on his journeys will be invited to a special preview exhibition to view the finished works. There, they will have the opportunity to debate with the artist himself how he has decided to represent their taste. These encounters will be filmed and will form the conclusion to each of the three programmes. The result will be a path-breaking collaboration between one of Britain's most provocative and socially observant artists, the programme-makers, and the people of Sunderland, Tunbridge Wells and the Cotswolds who have opened up their homes and their lives to him.

Production companies:
Random Acts: George Shaw, Hilary Lloyd and Francis Alys: Tate Media
What Makes A Masterpiece: Silver River
The Arbor: Artangel

Grayson Perry on Taste:
Director: Neil Crombie.
Executive Producer: Dinah Lord
Production Company: Seneca Productions

TX 2012