Numbered from the edition of 68, with two artist’s proofs. Signed by the artist and numbered on the reverse. Published by Paragon Press, London.

Created in 2022, Our Town is a monumental etching in which Grayson Perry maps the social and emotional geography of a society increasingly shaped by online communication. Conceived following the artist’s experience of social media during the Covid-19 lockdowns, the work presents a densely populated imaginary town whose districts, buildings and landmarks embody the attitudes, anxieties and competing identities encountered within contemporary digital culture.

Rendered from an elevated, map-like perspective, the town unfolds through winding roads, waterways, architectural clusters and expanses of countryside. Large block-letter labels divide the landscape into territories including ‘PHD’, ‘SMUG’, ‘IDENTARIA’, ‘COOL’ and ‘SINCERITY’, while establishments such as ‘The Selfie and Socialist’ and ‘Style over Substance’ appear among a profusion of slogans, neologisms and cultural references. Terms including ‘tradwife’, ‘purity spiral’, ‘pseudoprofundity’ and ‘fauxminism’ locate the work firmly within the evolving language of online discourse.

Maps have occupied an important position within Perry’s printmaking since Map of an Englishman of 2004. Rather than providing objective geographical information, these works chart subjective territories formed by emotion, identity, belief and social affiliation. In Our Town, the apparent authority of cartography is applied to the unstable landscape of social media, where opinions form within increasingly isolated communities and the reciprocal exchange of face-to-face conversation is frequently absent.

Perry described the image as a guide to a community of online cults and acknowledged that most people now inhabit this imaginary town to some degree. Its intricate surface rewards close inspection, yet its abundance of conflicting information also reproduces the disorientating experience of navigating digital culture. Combining traditional etching with contemporary language and characteristically pointed humour, Our Town examines the fantasies, divisions and absurdities through which modern society constructs its collective identity.

A detailed condition report is available upon request