Richard Ansett

(British, born 1966)

BIRTH, 2018

Footnotes

Exhibited
London, Fitzrovia Chapel, 25-30 January 2019
London, Somerset House, Sony World Photography Awards Exhibition, 2019

Richard Ansett is a renowned photographer and long-time collaborator of Grayson Perry. BIRTH depicts Grayson Perry dressed as his alter ego, Claire, posed in a contemporary reworking of the mother and child motif. Both iconic and iconoclastic, Claire holds an infant in her arms, lit softly from behind and surrounded by flowers and pale pink drapery. Posed as a traditional icon might, with gaze averted into the distance, we are invited to compare this image with one of the most universally recognisable subjects in art and religious history.

Originally unveiled by Grayson Perry himself at the Fitzrovia Chapel in London in January 2019, the lightbox was displayed on an altar, illuminating the secular, baroque chapel. Richard Ansett commented on this work: "Claire is not a natural mother. This is a trans-immaculate conception", going on to comment that: "The work balances centuries of art history and religious symbolism with a high-camp photographic parody and is a vulgar appropriation for the 21st Century that challenges the archaic boundaries of the heteronormative state that oppresses everyone."

Ansett met Perry for the first time in 2013 at the Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium, while photographing him for the BBC Reith lectures. He has since worked with Perry every year following this for Channel 4, photographing him to promote Perry's documentaries of contemporary British life.

BIRTH was awarded First Prize for a Single Portrait in the Sony World Photography Awards in 2019.