David Shrigley: Brain Activity at Hayward Gallery on artrepublic.com

The exhibition will feature some 175 works, the majority of which are new or never before shown in the UK. 

David Shrigley is best known for his pared down drawings and animations that make witty and wry observations on a range of familiar social subjects and everyday situations. Deliberately amateurish and crude, they have an immediate and accessible appeal, while offering insightful commentary on the absurdities of life, death and everything in between. Since graduating from the Glasgow School of Art in 1991, Shrigley has produced more than 7000 works on paper exploring everything from the mundane to the sublime through text and image. For this Hayward Gallery exhibition, he will present some 80 drawings never before seen in the UK, plus around 45 larger new paintings on paper. Shrigley also presents a brand new animation, which will be shown alongside a selection of existing films including New Friends (2009) – an ironic twist on peer pressure – as well as Sleep (2009), Light Switch (2007) and Ones (2009), in which the use of repetition brings familiar behaviour into view.

The exhibition will showcase the full diversity of the artist‟s sculptural work, including new works and interventions that respond to the Hayward Gallery‟s spaces. Ranging from hand-crafted sculptures made out of unusual materials, to larger series and installations, including 12 Large Eggs (2011), Insects (2007) and Black Boots (2010), many of Shrigley‟s sculptures are characterised by their odd scale, lending the works a strange, uncanny edge. Death and the macabre are recurrent themes in.

Shrigley‟s work, treated with the same deadpan humour as the everyday. His work Gravestone (2008) is inscribed with a mundane shopping list, while his taxidermied works include a puppy holding up a sign reading „I‟m Dead‟ and a series of headless animals ranging in size from squirrel to ostrich. The exhibition will also feature a specially commissioned steel gate integrating with the Hayward Gallery‟s architecture, and a new work displayed on one of the Hayward Gallery‟s sculpture terraces.

Other exhibition highlights include a large-scale in-situ wall painting as well as a set of bronze weapons, Swords and Daggers (2010). An early work, The Contents of the Gap between the Refrigerator and the Cooker (1995), is a colourful strip that, upon closer inspection, reveals itself to be a pile of miniature plasticine creatures. Additionally, a well-known series of photographs feature discreet interventions that the artist has orchestrated in various landscapes and interiors, injecting comedic irony to otherwise everyday banal imagery. Often extremely funny, these are the sort of scenarios you never come across in real life, but wish you did, such as River for Sale (1999) and Lost (1996), which depicts a paper note on a tree calling out for a lost pigeon.

OPENING HOURS: Daily: 10.00 – 18.00, Thur & Fri 10.00 - 20.00

Image Credits:

David Shrigley, I’m Dead, 2010, Taxidermy puppy with wooden sign and acrylic paint, Image © the artist and courtesy of the artist, Collection Hamilton Corporate Finance Limited

David Shrigley, Pumpkin, 1998, Image © the artist and courtesy of the artist

David Shrigley, The Philosopher, 2009, Image © the artist and courtesy of the artist and Stephen Friedman, Photo: Mark Blower

Untitled, 2011, Courtesy of David Shrigley and Yvon Lambert