Born in 1968, Treacle Town (Macclesfield), the artist lived and worked in Glasgow, Scotland for 27 years before moving to Brighton, England in 2015. His introduction to art came in the form of record covers and by age 11 his driving desire was to design artwork for Adam and the Ants. Raised by fundamentalist Christian parents in Leicester, Shrigley grew up drawing in sketchbooks and notepads, before attending the Glasgow School of Art. He studied Fine Art, but his interest in drawing comedic works, often devoid of much formal craft, made him an outlier amongst his peers.

Shrigley has become a virtuoso in the forming of a deftly crafted mix of dark and light humour channelled via the simplest of forms. His deadpan drawings and acerbic nihilisms speak to universal mores, or largely unspoken melancholy, and through their uncontextualized nature they have unintentionally mirrored the development of the language of the internet, or as Shrigley puts it, “social media parlance.” This overlap has propelled his work into the everyday, carrying that lauded ability to reach both art gallery connoisseurs and your “Susan’s from Accounting,” thereby making Shrigley one of contemporary art’s most successful names.

David Shrigley: “I feel like I’ve become famous for picking my nose … somehow somebody saw me picking my nose and thought, ‘Ah, that’s cool! Nobody else picks their nose like you do!”

David Shrigley

British

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I Received a Clonk to the Head