The Crafts Council has recently acquired an exciting new addition to its national collection of contemporary craft: a pair of large-scale tapestries by Grayson Perry, winner of the Turner Prize in 2003. Julie Cope's Grand Tour: The Story of a Life by Grayson Perry, will be touring the UK until summer 2019. Julie Cope is a fictional character created by Grayson Perry – an Essex everywoman whose story he has told through the two tapestries and extended ballad presented in the exhibition. The Essex House Tapestries: The Life of Julie Cope (2015) illustrate the key events in the heroine’s journey from her birth during the Canvey Island floods of 1953 to her untimely death in a tragic accident on a Colchester street.
Rich in cultural and architectural details, the tapestries contain a social history of Essex and modern Britain that everyone can relate to. The tapestries are shown alongside a graphic installation, and specially commissioned audio recording of The Ballad of Julie Cope, a 3000 word narrative written and read by Perry himself that illuminates Julie’s hopes and fears as she journeys through life. These artworks represent, in Perry’s words, ‘the trials, tribulations, celebrations and mistakes of an average life’.