Provincial Punk...

The Missus started doing ceramics about three and a half years ago and her technique and her work are improving at an impressive speed. It's wonderful to see she's found her 'thing'. What I get from martial arts, she gets from pottery. 

Part of her new-found love means we visit various exhibitions by ceramic artists and, last weekend, we headed to the Turner Gallery in Margate to visit the Grayson Perry exhibition, Provincial Punk. 

There was so much brilliant stuff at this exhibition, but one of my favourite things was a speeded-up film showing Perry creating a couple of hand-built coil pots from start to finish, then being able to see the same pots in the exhibition. 

Perry is a fascinating, articulate and inspiring artist. I love the idea that he started doing pottery because it was seen as a bit 'naff' and he thought he could use hand-built pots or craft stuff like tapestries as quiet smart bombs, whose challenging content is smuggled in via a seemingly uncontroversial form. 

I thought Perry's Reith Lectures were wonderful when they went out a few years ago. I've now seen a lot of his work and I genuinely think he's equally wonderful, too.