The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal

Credit: Gift of Dato' Kho Hui Meng 2023, Collection of SMU

This artwork is part of 25x25 Campus Art Tour.

Listen to the audio description of the artwork here.

Transcript:

This large tapestry is a tableau of Tim Rakewell, a fictional 21st century software developer, relaxing with his family in his large rural English home. Soothing pastel colours dominate the domestic scene, emphasising the bucolic setting. A closer look at the interior of the house reveals how the aesthetic choices signal middle-class status, and aspirations for social and global mobility.

To the left of the tapestry, Tim's parents-in-law read sitting on Eames chairs. Nearby, his elder child plays with a dollhouse on an Afghan war rug. In the centre, Tim's business partner in a yellow dress and angel wings, stands in for the Archangel Gabriel of religious Renaissance Art, referenced in the title of the tapestry, to announce Tim's new wealth with the selling of his software business to Richard Branson of Virgin. On the table before her, there is an iPad displaying an article from the Financial Times, with the heading "Rakewell sells to Virgin for two hundred and seventy million pounds". The table also holds a still life demonstrating the bounty of Tim's affluent lifestyle, with organic vegetables, a French press, and brands that allude to cultural respectability including a spoof Penguin Books mug with the book title "Class Traitor by Chip E Prole". To the right of the tapestry is Tim's wife leaning against an Aga stove busy on her phone, and Tim is seated on a Chippendale-style sofa upholstered in bold geometric African wax prints, dandling his baby. A cushion cover on the sofa reads "Bourgeois and Proud".

This tapestry, ‘The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal', is the fourth of six tapestries from the series ‘The Vanity of Small Differences' by English artist Grayson Perry. The tapestries tell the story of Tim Rakewell, a fictional 21st century software developer who ascends from his working-class background up the social and economic ladder, progressing through the social strata of modern British society. Perry, a great chronicler of contemporary British life, explores class and how it determines taste and the visual environment people build around themselves: from what we eat, to how we dress and how we decorate our house, as not just a means of expression but also of defining where we position ourselves in society.

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‘The Annunciation of the Virgin Deal' by Grayson Perry is one of six tapestries from his series The Vanity of Small Differences. The tapestries tell the story of Tim Rakewell, a fictional 21st century software developer who ascents from his working-class background up the social and economic ladder. Through the series, Perry, a great chronicler of contemporary British life, makes stealthy comments about class and taste, décor and decorum, and the status of the artist versus that of the artisan. The artist's primary inspiration was A Rake's Progress (c. 1733-35) by William Hogarth, which chronicles the decline and fall of fictional character Tom Rakewell. The secondary influence comes from early Renaissance art, as referenced in the title and motifs alluding to Carlo Crivelli, Matthias Grünewald, Robert Campin and Jan van Eyck.