Map of truths and beliefs

“I wanted to make a sort of altarpiece, a map of heaven... The charge of it is in the clash of the prosaic and the spiritual. I was thinking of pilgrimage in a wider, non-religious sense, so I included places of pilgrimage that I’d googled. Most are religious but many are historical and secular. In the centre is an eye.... Alan Measles, my teddy bear, is in the middle of the pupil, as the god.

“The female figure at the far left represents the aggressive consumerism of modern life: she has a black trouser suit, two iPhones and straightened hair. The boy at the centre is innocent logic. He’s got his set-square, his toy car and camouflage trousers; he’s trying to make sense of the universe. The bear is a wild, emotional vision of the world and the woman opposite in folk costume represents tradition.

“Between them they hold in balance the two things: raw creativity and sensuous desire, and the rules of society. Together they carry the disc of belief.”

—Grayson Perry