A large woodcut print by Sir Grayson Perry has gone on display in the Guildhall Art Gallery, representing the irrational market that governs the City of London’s stock market traders.
The print, ‘Animal Spirit’, has been donated by the former director of Mondrian Capital, Hamish Parker and facilitated by the Contemporary Art Society, and will be on semi-permenant display in the gallery.
The symbolic representation of the ‘irrational beast that controls the market’ shows the animal surrounded by symbols taken from the names of patterns in Japanese Candlestick graphs, supposedly invented by 16th-century Japanese rice traders to help them understand the fluctuations in their market, and which are still used today on City traders’ computer screens.
The large woodcut print of a half-bull and half-bear was created in 2016, it has not been on public display since it was shown at the Serpentine Gallery in 2017.
Chairman of the City of London Corporation’s Culture, Heritage, and Libraries Committee, Munsur Ali, added: “This striking print by Sir Grayson Perry is a welcome addition to ‘The Big City’ exhibition and the City Corporation’s permanent collection, and we are very grateful to Hamish Parker for this generous donation.”
The woodcut print has been displayed in a side gallery on the ground floor and is easiest to find if you stand at the ground floor exit doors from the gallery and turn right into the side room.
The Guildhall Art Gallery is open every day from 10:30am to 4pm and is free to visit.
Gillray he is not. Nor any other satirist of talent.