About the Author

David Shrigley was born in Macclesfield in 1968 and studied at Glasgow School of Art. He has worked as a sculptor, photographer and 'environment artist' and, most famously, as a cartoonist and illustrator. His work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, at the MoMA in New York, and in Paris, Berlin, Melbourne and beyond. He has published over twenty books, and has animated a music video for Blur and produced another for Bonny Prince Billy. His work has also been profiled in a documentary for Channel 4. He lives and works in Glasgow.

Reviews

Weird, funny, abject, wise, silly, savage, moral and engaging.
* * Independent * *

If you're looking for a humour/art crossover, then David Shrigley's stuff is spot on. I like the childlike aspect, and there's a lot of irony. It's a tricky thing to get right; a lot of people try to copy him. You look at some of his stuff and think: I could do that - but, like all great art, all the bits have to be in the right place for it to work.
*Harry Hill*

David Shrigley is probably the funniest gallery-type artist who ever lived.
*Dave Eggers*

With a casual gesture Shrigley points to that hideous shape whose name I've never known - and then he names it. And the name is profoundly, embarrassingly familiar. I'm laughing while frantically searching for a pen, so desperate to capture the feeling he has unearthed in me.
*Miranda July*

An artist who achieves that rarest of phenomena: the capacity to make his audience view the world in his terms entirely. . . [he] takes on everything: memory and forgetting, love and hate, murder and preservation, god and godlessness.
*Will Self*

Shrigley's comedy appears to confirm the belief of great humourists (from Laurence Sterne to Woody Allen) that laughter is synonymous with hope. In the arena of contemporary art, Shrigley's work maintains a dualism, which is rare, rewarding and ultimately generous.
* * Frieze * *

David Shrigley is a rare thing in the art world: someone whose work people - normal(ish) people - actually love
* * The Skinny * *

The Glasgow-based arist's scribbly drawings and witty captions have inspired a cult following and a celebrity fanbase including Will Self and Franz Ferdinand.
* * X Magazine * *

David Shridley's wonderfully skewed cartoons
* * The Glasgow Herald * *

Shrigley specialises in the humour of a horny teenage boy crossed with an uptight conservative wrangling with modern moral dilemmas. Needless to say, we are in love.
* * The Gay Times * *

a must for fans of the absurd
* * ES magazine * *

Funny and profound and surprisingly all at the same time . . . his work is smart, self-deprecating and cleverly understated.
* * Word Magazine * *

Ridiculously funny, weird, disturbing and thought-provoking all at the same time. David Shrigley will probably never be knighted but I think he should be. Arise Sir David.
* * I-on * *

The "gallery-type" comic art of acclaimed fine artist Shrigley, deceptively simple yet mind-blowing in its seditiousness and perspective-altering lexicography, goes where many have ventured: Saul Steinberg, Raymond Pettibon, William Powhida, and Maira Kalman among them. These artists all use text, not as a design element but for the value of text itself. Sometimes, the text integrates into a drawing or a photograph, sometimes not. Shrigley takes the idea the furthest, proving that it isn't language that determines consciousness but the other way around. It's impossible to leaf through this compilation and not emerge with the sense that some latent intellectual and emotional block, born of dread, has been at least partially lifted through a process akin to extreme mixed-media homeopathy. The variegated works showcased, from a Venn diagram presenting all the possible logical articulations of various behaviors (singing, dancing, stealing) to decapitated taxidermy (a cat, an ostrich), and dementedly funny sketches and panels drawn in Shrigley's signature childlike style (for example, a cloaked executioner taking his/her dog for a walk after a successful slaying, and a boring bus ride) possess both an inherent dadaist quality and a strong sociopolitical subtext. Taken cumulatively, Shrigley's comic illustrations and words have the effect of a miraculous mental booster drug. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.