UK artist Grayson Perry explores divided country in new exhibition

LONDON - 10 June 2017: British artist Grayson Perry will launch a new exhibition on Thursday, the day Britain votes in a general election, and unsurprisingly, his works cast a critical eye over the country's tumultuous political landscape.

The exhibition, dubbed "The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever!" will run at London's Serpentine gallery until September.

Much of the artwork addresses the controversy around Britain's impending departure from the European Union, known as Brexit, after Britons voted to leave in June 2016.

"It was a point when there was a kind of cultural divide in the country and what the referendum did," Perry told Reuters.

"It presented a yes-no, black-and-white question at just the right moment in our society when there was unacknowledged grievances by a large section of society and they hung those on the EU debate."

The exhibition features tapestries and sculpture, as well as Perry's trademark provocative pottery.

Two ceramic vases, decorated with images crowd-sourced from "Leave" and "Remain" voters via social media, are the keystone of the show.

As a reminder of the domestic political division, Perry, who describes himself as a "gnarled 57-year-old transvestite artist" on his Twitter page, has placed "Our Mother", a statue of a refugee, in between the vases.

Perry won the Turner Prize, a prestigious British visual arts award that helped to put artists including Damien Hirst and Tracy Emin on the map, in 2003. In addition to his visual art, he has also produced television documentaries in recent years.