The Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry has been selected as this year’s Reith Lecturer. He will present a series of four lectures, entitled ‘Grayson Perry: Playing to the Gallery’, Grayson will explore the role and place of art in the global, digital landscape of the 21st Century. All four of the lectures will be broadcast on Radio 4 in October and November as part a celebration of arts and culture for 2013.

Mr Perry, who was awarded the Turner Prize in 2003, is best-known for his ceramics, and tapestries. He is also a notorious cross-dresser whose alter-ego, Claire is a national treasure. This year Perry won a BAFTA award for his documentary 'All in the Best Possible Taste', a film about social and cultural taste in Britain.  He is the 1st visual artist to deliver the well respected Reith Lectures which have been bestowed on figures from various cultural and political disciplines. Past recipients have included Bertrand Russell, Robert Oppenheimer Aung San Suu Kyi and Daniel Barenboim.

Perry's topic will cover 'What 21st century art really looks like, its role in our society and the idea of how we judge quality'.

Perry told the BBC; “I want to celebrate an emotional relationship with visual art, the innocent drive to make it, to look at it, feast on it, to love it. I feel now is a good time to reflect on the idea of quality and how we might, in an age where we are told anything can be art, appreciate which art is any good."

This years Reith lectures will be broadcast in front of live audiences nationally this autumn. The first lecture will be given at Tate Modern  followed by lectures at St George’s Hall in Liverpool, The Guildhall in Derry-Londonderry and Central Saint Martins in London.