politics — after he clinched a surprise victory in the alabama senate race. democrats are calling for the postponement of a final vote on president trump's planned tax reform. the president wants that vote to be held next week. the british prime minister theresa may is preparing to meet european union leaders in brussels — hours after a parliamentary defeat on a key piece of brexit legislation. mps voted to give parliament a legal guarantee of a vote on the final deal. 11 members of her own conservative party rebelled. the united nations is warning that a reduction in the number of peacekeeping troops in the democratic republic of congo is likely to lead to more instability and loss of life. the unfolding humanitarian crisis has lead to severe acute malnutrition affecting hundreds of thousands of children. now on bbc news, hardtalk. my guest says it started as a joke, a fantasy he had.

that he, a transvestite potter, would have an exhibition among the ancient treasures of the british museum. but that is exactly what he did. grayson perry, welcome to hardtalk. it is a very unlikely mix of modern art at the british museum. why did you want to do it? i had a track record of doing exhibitions here. it is quite sporadic.

a predecessor in 1985 exhibitions, which he did with a collection at the museum of mankind, which i saw as a recent graduate. so i knew that such things were possible. the proposal was that you had the tomb of the unknown craftsman. yes. the idea was, it was going to be a mixture of my work, as a representative of a fantasy civilisation, one i had in my head, and a celebration of the anonymous craftsmen throughout history. of course that was a poignant thing. i did not realise until i finished that one of the most interesting thing about the title is that it is a counterpart to the world where i come from, where the identity of the maker is the most significant thing.

it could be any old piece of tat but when it has a name applied to it, it becomes valuable. a leonardo da vinci or damien hirst is only worth a huge amount of money if they it's been confirmed they made it. most of the things in this exhibition, we do not know who made them. i read you wore your magic robe whenever you went to the museum? there is an internal logic about my own civilisation. iam i am mischievous about it. i am playing with it. the idea that i have my teddy bear as the god of my civilisation. at first, it was just quite funny. quickly, i realised it had legs. it could run. you chose things you liked? yes. that is not a trivial thing, what you like. people would dismiss it... why i was given the opportunity

was because of who i am, i am a professional intuiter. you were alongside experts in the museum. that must be a strange business. here you are, a professional intuit and asking them to explain objects to you. how did they respond? brilliantly. they are interested in showing their stuff. an opportunity to dig in the nether regions of the collection was lovely for them. you ended up with 170 objects from the museum. there were 30 of your own pieces of art. one of the first things you see when you come into the exhibition, is the line ‘do not look too hard for meaning here'.

do you mean that? what i mean is, people are allowed to make up their own mind. sometimes this huge institution is a generator of meaning, something that it looks for all the time. the experts want to interpret everything, and give very detailed labels. i was aware of that, going around with the curators. they live or die by the accuracy of the information. or the agreed accuracy of the information. even the meanings they put to things are often guesses, orfluid, or their projections. modern projections onto the past... "that's because of that". but it might be rubbish. what i want people to do is scrutinise the information in the show and make their own connections. i hope people feel inspired to make a version of my own show. if only in their heads.

could anyone have done this, then? no! i am a professional artist. i have been working at this for 30 years. do not knock back. modern art is not a con, i've been working hard for it! have some respect! the first pot, when you walk into this exhibition, has various quotes on it. things like, "i just want to satisfy myself that i am more clever than the celebrity charlatan." it is like you are immediately engaging with people's skepticism. i want them to park their prejudice. the art world gets very fed up. sometimes the media isjustified. i am the worst audience

of contemporary art. the contemporary art world gets very bored with the prejudices that the media has. they have a stock line about it being shocking, worthless and a joke. that's their line. it is almost like the contemporary art world is a particular culture. that's what i've become aware of putting the show together. they are a tribe. it has its own internal rituals, its little white temples. it can get bound up in itself. it does not necessarily speak to the wider audience. at its worst, it can become very insular and inward looking. it doesn't need the audience a lot of the time. there are collectors, dealers, artists, they have a close circle and they do not need the money of the public. they do not need the attention of the public. so the art world can become self—indulgent. i am interested in communicating with a wider audience. that is one of the attractions of having an exhibition

in the british museum. so the first pot acknowledges that. then they see what? three helmets. it's a tease. be on your guard and don't take things for granted. can you explain them? the first is a motorcycle helmet that i rode on my motorcycle around germany. it is very brightly painted. it is painted with aluminium. it is a real crash helmet. next to that is an aluminium helmet, and it looks like it has been dug up from an archaeological dig. i made it in 1981.

it has been in my back garden for 30 years. it looks corroded and old and authentic. then, next to that, is a ceremonial headdress made from animal skin. it looks like a prop. that looks like the fake thing. the real thing looks like the fake thing and that's what i was saying. look closely at everything, read things carefully, pay attention to the labels. and it has worked. i see people are studying at the exhibition. they think, ‘is this an object from the artist or from the museum'? and reacting differently to your work because it is here? i hope so. because they're on guard, they are looking at things neutrally. they are not thinking it's contemporary art so they're looking for that. they have to drop their guard

and look at everything with an openness that this might be a piece from egypt from 2,000 years ago or maybe it is a piece of contemporary art. it may be a throwaway thing from victorian england. i took a risk because these objects are very significant. my objects are up against them. although, part of the exhibition is about a reference to everything, notjust religion. ‘hold your beliefs lightly‘. it was aimed at religion but the rigidity of belief is a dangerously mental illness. to hold onto your beliefs until your knuckles are white is a very destructive and insane thing to do. one of the quotes on the pots

is that you are into offbeat stuff. yeah. yet you said one of the big ambitions in your career is to make happy and non—confrontational art. offbeat is a light—hearted thing. are you confrontational? is your art confrontational? i think it probably is but not in the way that many people might think. it's not about sex or violence. i am not necessary challenging people. the area that is most influential on me, psychotherapy and mental illness, i am working in the area of sanity and what makes us a good life as a human being.

our mindset is central to that. that is the area where i challenge people. so maybe that's where i challenge people. it is about holding things lightly. it is a tightrope walk. you challenge people. you have pots with graphic sexual imagery. there is a whole section about sex. some of it is thousands of years old and it is more explicit than the things i have made. there is a stone carving, 1,000 years old, from an irish church, of a woman holding her vagina open. it is like, nothing is new. the idea... the problem people have with sex is not necessarily sex but the context it's in. it is about exploitation and brutality and violence. these are the areas where sex... people get offended by sex and they are the same people who are often doing horrific things. but in terms of whether you're confrontational, you have put lines like, ‘we have found the body of your child'. really quite arresting stuff. for

some who said they wanted to make happy art... are you making happy art now? definitely. decorative stuff. that's underrated ? yes. do you think the art world is too hung up on meanings? the worst thing an artist can do is to get too wrapped up in their own ideas. i want to create things that look beautiful. the meaning is part of what makes a good artwork but it should not be the be all and end all. quite often i get the feeling that you do not want to sit with the meaning of a work in your house. often i think about, would a person like to come down and look at it the next day after they bought it? that brings me to why you have chosen pots. you object to being called a potter.

that is how you made your name, however, as a ceramicist. but you describe it as a modest craft. it is. there are a couple of large pots in the exhibition and that is as far as i can go. any bigger and it is a technical nightmare. but it need not be modest. in britain, pottery is underrated. in china they treat ceramics much higher, and it is a different approach. it's different in britain. they are still modest objects if you put them against most contemporary art. even the flashiest ceramic, next to a jeff koon or a damien hirst, it disappears. they are so shouty, the modern art. so in the context, they are modest. there's another reason you chose that modesty,

because allied with what you're putting on your pots, that's where you think, that's the point of your art. initially why i did ceramics was purely by chance. i was a penniless graduate. i didn't have a studio. evening classes were practically free at the time in london. i could go and keep my hand in doing a bit of clay. then i started making pots. i was interested in my art friends‘ reaction to the pots. craft was seen as naff, ridiculous and unfashionable. it was seen as a kind of pretentious next door neighbour of art. it was a class thing as well. the higher academician idea of art as opposed to the workmanlike craft.

i was interested in the baggage around pottery. and then of course there‘s the consumer baggage of pottery. ‘s and higgs and you‘re aunties‘s knickknacks and the baggage they have —— its antiques. they were all to me quite good ammunition to work with. all of those thoughts people have about pottery, they were not contemporary art, so there was this constant battle with it. i trained as a contemporary artist, not a potter. i was interested in all of those different ideas. 20 years on when i won the turner prize people still had difficulty with the fact that i was making pots. i thought, there‘s mileage in this! you can make a shark into art and nobody questions it. to do pottery still seemed to rankle with people! i found that fascinating. i was dealing with the prejudices of the kind of liberal and intellectual elite.

here you are now dressed as a man, which is not certainly your usual public persona. why did you choose not to wear a dress today? it is 9amin the morning. i would have to get up very early. is that it? yes. and i have many other meetings today. there‘s transport issues. heat is the enemy of drag, as they say. i wonder if you‘ve changed your approach to it. you seem to appear as grayson, grayson in a suit more often. i‘m more relaxed about it nowadays. it was never about publicity. did it help, though? you say it was never about publicity but did it help your art? of course it did! for the same reasons that the shockingness of winding people up about pottery helped? yeah.

in the modern world, where the cultural field is so loaded, the media is part of it. anybody who clings on to the idea that, i am above all that, is making a rod for their own back. but it was not only publicity. i‘m a transvestite! i‘m erotically compelled to dress up like a woman. it‘s when you choose to dress up. i dress up when i want to and when it is convenient and when it fits in with what i‘m doing. i will always opt to do it if i can. if we were doing this interview later in the day and i did not have so much to do i would probably be in a frock. i would like to do that. is it coincidental to your art?

iimagine it i imagine it can‘t be. you just walk around this exhibition to see how important it is to you. you see claire, your alter ego... historically, you look back through art, which is mainly done by men, and a lot of it is about sex. tra nsvestism is part of my sexuality. you describe yourself as clare. does clare exist any more? i think, as i‘ve got older, i‘ve integrated my transvestite behaviour into my personality. it‘s not a separate thing. that‘s part of sanity, bringing all of your personalities into one. integration. that‘s that shrine in the show, the woman with the anvil

hammering my parts together. the idea that sanity is not to push parts of yourself away, to disassociate them... it's it‘s to bring them in... a good definition of sanity is to be all of yourself all of the time to everyone, not to be a chameleon. that‘s mental illness. you make the point that how people dress is a physical manifestation of how they want to be treated. it‘s an unconscious desire that‘s part of transvestism. asa child... you‘ve got to remember that sexual fetishes on the whole developed in nurture, in childhood. they come out of that. there might be a predisposition in a person, but i think they are mainly to do with nurture. therefore, if you feel as a child that you‘re not getting the sort

of attention that you want, you might start looking for strategies or cues in life that might get you that attention. which brings me to one of the items here, your high priestess cape. you go round the corner of this exhibition and you see something that could be an oriental work. it‘s a satin cape with embroidery on it. it‘s got exotic birds sitting on a branch from a distance, but when you come closer you realise they‘re not birds at all. they‘re basically flying penises. yes, flying penises. the design was based on a wedding kimono. the flying penis, often you think of the erect penis as an aggressive thing. but there‘s also a delicate little

bird, perhaps there‘s a message in there to people. it goes back to roman times, piranha must bosch used it, it goes back many years. i have got a model of a mediaeval pilgrim badge that people would have gotten at a festival, and that is a flying penis. i want to normalise these things to a certain extent. if i do it it would be great. i want to say, grow up. do you think that has happened with modern art, that over the last 20 years, people‘s reaction has changed? there is more acceptance? i think the media‘s reaction is the thing that is difficult to deal with. the public are much more tolerant than the media. the media has a fantasy of its audience, particularly the right wing media. in britain that is quite

dominant in many ways. you don‘t think they‘re reflecting rather than informing? they‘re certainly not reflective of my audience. my audience are much more sophisticated than the popular media view of contemporary art and the issues that i deal with. my audience are what i would call a kind of middle class, middlebrow, nationaltrust, radio 4, well—informed, educated, the supporters of culture. has that always been your audience? you‘re talking about middle england. in a sense, a transvestite potter who puts... people are tolerant!

i never get any hassle with people who are tolerant. that‘s so annoying. trying to stoke up shock. it‘s boring. did you always know people were tolerant? your family were not tolerant. they‘re innocent. that was a0 years ago. the modern world has moved on. the internet, the media... and moved on because of people like you being public with their art? i hope so. i could be sentenced to death in a few countries for wearing a frock. it‘s ridiculous! grayson, thank you for coming on hardtalk. pleasure. well, after a very brief mild spell,

those temperatures are coming down again for the next few days, and into the start of the weekend. and, for thursday, it‘s low pressure which dominates the scene. tightly packed isoba rs across the country meaning fairly windy, and they‘ll be blowing in lots of showers, particularly to western areas of the country. and these showers will be of a wintry mix during the overnight period and first thing on thursday. some snow to the higher ground of scotland, northern ireland, northern england, wales, maybe the south—west of england, and some wet sleetiness down to lower levels for a time, too. so, first thing on thursday, we are again looking at an ice risk, particularly from the midlands, north wales, northwards, so watch out for these. there could even be some lying snow around on some of the higher routes, for example the pennines

and across scotland. but we start thursday off on quite an unsettled note. it‘s going to be windy, particularly across the west, maybe gales in exposure. plenty of showers here, becoming wintry over high ground, wintry showers as well for parts of wales, in towards north—west england. ice to watch out for, too. largely dry to start in eastern and south—eastern parts. there‘ll be some early sunshine around, but it will be quite chilly. same too east of the pennines, eastern scotland. but further west, loads of showers, and again some heavy, and even some sleetiness down to lower levels as well. and then, through the day, very little change. it stays blustery, i think the winds slowly easing down through the day. they‘ll continue to be strong across the north, and certainly the south—west, with gales here. plenty of showers, with wintriness again over the higher ground, but central and eastern parts of the country should be drier, with some sunshine. but notice the temperatures down on wednesday‘s values, in single figures for all. it‘s going to feel cold if you add on that wind. then, as we head on in towards friday, we open the floodgates again to the arctic, as this area

of low pressure moves across in towards scandinavia. so it does mean a cold, frosty start in places for friday, and also a risk of some ice. but i think, generally speaking, friday is looking like being a quieter day. we should have more in the way of sunshine around, lighter winds for many. still fairly breezy around the coasts, where we‘ll see some wintry showers at times. now, that cold air is with us obviously through friday and into the start of the weekend. but then, for the second half of the weekend, we‘ll start to see this plume of milder air slowly making inroads. so it‘s a cold start saturday — again, watch out for some ice. some sunshine around through the morning. i think that‘s slowly fading as more cloud piles in from the west, maybe with a few showers, and it‘s going to be another cold day. for sunday, though, there is more cloud generally. i think sunshine will be very few and far between, and there will be a few showers, but that milder air slowly making inroads.

this is the briefing. i‘m sally bundock. our top stories: more desperate migrants are rescued from the mediterranean — as european leaders meet to discuss the crisis. a memorial service will be held for the victims of the grenfell tower fire — we speak to some of the survivors. for the first time — a possible death toll in the rohingya crisis — one charity says nearly 7000 people were killed. coming up in business briefing... who owns the internet? us regulators could rip up obama‘s rules on net neutrality giving broadband firms huge power over online traffic. plus — the empire scales back — fox prepares to sell its entertainment business to disney for around $60 billion. we‘ll be getting the views of media expert guy bisson.