I first encountered David Shrigley via his postcards. I remember seeing some of the annotated comical and child-like scrawlings in friends collections and in passing (places I cannot quite recall, but I started to recognise his style somewhere along the way). I then came across a collection of his books and postcards in a little art shop in Portobello Road. I was enchanted by his funny and sometimes dark humour and drawings and bought a book of postcards. Some of them hang in the bathroom now:
The exhibition is small but satisfying. It's not often you get to walk around an art gallery and hear people giggling and find yourself doing it too. I love art, but often taking in an exhibition is an experience that requires either an appreciation of aesthetic technique and craft, an understanding of the idea behind the art, or the patience and ability to question the many notions of the artwork and not get frustrated when you can't figure it out and are left thinking 'what the fuck was that?' Artists, more often than not, want you to think just that. To an extent, I think the idea of art is to take us out of our comfort zone; to take everyday reality and tip it upside down or shake it up and sometimes leave you just there, thinking 'huh?' Some artists do it in an annoying, pretentious way. Some art work is ridiculous and we should be allowed to say 'that's stupid' and still appreciate it or just trash it, but we often have stunted conversations afterwards with others who have seen the work that go something along the lines of:
"What did you think of it?"
"Well, some of it was really good. Very clever, I really understood what he was saying. The use of dog poo as a metaphor for the smears and stains on a world marred by economic and political recession and our inability to deal with our shortcomings."
"Yes, I thought exactly the same. The dog poo was great. He's a genius to have thought of that."
Ok, I can't say I have ever had a conversation like that...but basically art can be bloody pretentious, and we often feel like we are stupid idiots left behind in the normal everyday world if we do not 'get it'.
I like that David Shrigley's work lacks this pretention. It does not take itself seriously. The exhibition is a mixture of sculpture, drawings, paintings, photographs and animation. His messy lines and oddball characters made me feel welcome and at home. Some of the exhibits still left me thinking 'what the fuck?' In hindsight, I think Shrigley was perhaps drawing attention to this aspect of the art world and even pointing a comical finger at it. Even the works that puzzled me, more often than not made me smile. There was a cabinet full of metal objects - hooks, knives and nails in battered metal, many with silly faces engraved in them. I stared at the objects for some time trying to figure it out. What was he trying to do? What was this display about? Later I encountered the following drawing:
At this point I harked back to the cabinet and realised that it was a nod at a 'typical' museum display. The display (discounting the silly faces of course) looked very much like a cabinet you would find in a history museum. But then this is a museum, so he is also calling his own work a load of 'crap'. There are nods to contemporary artists in some of the pieces on display - for example an animation in which a middle aged man sleeps restlessly is reminisscent of Warhol's video installation of his sleeping boyfriend. It is not clear whether these homages are affectionate or mocking.
We are called to question too, as well as Shrigley himself. The very models of 'artist' and 'viewing audience' are questioned and mocked gently in many of his cartoons. The below are not both included in this exhbition, but are previous works I have encountered:
Shrigley's take on art is refreshing. It is fun.
The small things are magnified, the large matters rendered trivial. We pass a huge ceramic cup of tea, a long platform with numerous pairs of black ceramic boots on it. Later a row of ceramic eggs line up above our heads. A taxidermied jack russell informs us he is dead, despite the vigorous look on his face and his active stance.
Shrigley seems particularly interested in awkward situations and how we cope with them. One picture has a caption that reads something like 'let's have a cup of tea, that will make you feel better'. The man sitting on the sofa behind the offered cup of tea looks deranged and petrified and out of his mind, something a cup of tea definitely won't fix anytime soon. After looking at a sculpture of ants the viewer is confronted by a tiny door into the next room of the exhibition. It was fun watching who got on their hands and knees to crawl into the next room like an ant and who looked at the door and decided to walk the long way round.
Some would argue that Shrigley was the most pretentious of them all and his art is shit. I think he would relish these opinions as he begs the question himself many times through his work: what is art and futhermore, what is good art? I bet this exhibition angers some of the serious high-brow art crtics no end. And I bet, more than anyone, Shrigley will be pleased about that.
(also not included in this exhibition, but sums up the point nicely I feel)
I deliberately wrote my blog post before reading yours so as to contrast and compare :) I think it is rather spiffing that we had a similar feeling and experience! Brilliant blog! It's fun to read some of the comments in the newspaper reviews. People are unnecessarily mean though. Some of them are verging on foaming at the mouth in rage. It becomes entertaining in its own right!
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