New London Exhibition “Arms Fayre” Announced for 2012
A new London exhibition of British artist David Shrigley has been announced for early 2012. It will take place at the Stephen Friedman Gallery and will certainly be one of the shows to watch out for next year. Shrigley’s art frequently asks questions about the nature of contemporary art and its audience. He parodies the excessive and ridiculous aspects of the culture market and his rapidly executed and sometimes crudely made art suggest a compulsive desire to exploit and question the logic of contemporary art. Expressed in an extensive and expanding range of media, David Shrigley consistently seeks to widen his public. Operating frequently outside the gallery sphere, the artist disseminates his ideas in his weekly contribution to The Guardian, prolific publishing projects, collaborations with musicians and an interactive website. Shrigley seems to insist on giving place to the abnormal and plays on our fears of the odd, the peculiar, the insane and the out-of-control.
David Shrigley’s drawings and hand-rendered texts are typically dead-pan in their humour and reveal chance utterings like snippets of over-heard conversations. Shrigley’s voice is ever present in his artwork, using a disjunctive form of narrative that recalls the nonsensical and anarchic writing of Spike Milligan or the haphazard comedy of ‘The Goon Show’ – the famous comedy troupe which a Dada sensibility to a depressed post-war Britain. Reoccurring themes and thoughts pervade his story-telling capturing child-like views of the world, the perspective of aliens and
monsters or the compulsive habits of an eavesdropper shouting out loud.
In his sculptural works, the artist makes physical some of his more curious and eccentric propositions by transforming found objects or by playing with their scale. Taking Lewis Carroll’s perspective of Wonderland, Shrigley enlarges objects and imbues them with silly proportions. Throughout Shrigley’s work there is also an inescapable wit. It is, however, never the lighter side of life, but a dark and insightful view, exemplifying the underbelly of human nature.
David Shrigley @ Stephen Friedman Gallery 8 February – March Visit Exhibition