Glenn Fisher, 2005 |
What’s with all the Funny Stuff? It is an obsession of modern culture to immediately compartmentalise any new and original use of media, be it music, literature or art. Good artists are able to bring into question these boundaries; they blur the lines and turn stock descriptions on their heads. Through his use of haggard and sometimes haunting sketches, simple sculptures and misplaced photography, all giving verisimilitude to the absurd, David Shrigley’s art covers all questions, instilling the thought of an idea in its viewer and forcing them to take it away and deal with its development themselves. David Shrigley was born in Macclesfield in 1968 but soon moved with his family to Leicester. After an Art and Design Foundation course at the Leicester Polytechnic he went, in 1988, to study at the Glasgow School of Art and has lived in Glasgow since. His earliest works were collected in his first two books: ‘Slug Trails’ (1991) and ‘Merry Eczema’ (1992), both essentially self-published by Black Rose, Glasgow. In these first books Shrigley chose to adapt his sketchbooks, altering his original work to create a more cartoon-like style. After a friend suggested that his original drawings and own style were better, Shrigley decided to forego the adaptation process and with ‘Blanket of Filth’ (1994) published his natural work. Since then Shrigley has been prolific, producing a plethora of books and his work has become readily recognisable. Some of Shrigley’s work is, on the surface, unavoidably funny to people of a certain disposition. “I guess I'm happy for people to laugh at what I do because it's usually supposed to be funny.” His humour is, however, usually arrived at accidentally, “… I don't set out to be funny in the first place. I set out to be profound. It just ends up being funny. If I think it's funny then other people usually do too.” Here lies the hook with Shrigley’s art: the profundity of his work is made more poignant by being hidden amongst his absurd and often amusing images.
How Shrigley arrives at these images is perhaps best described as perseverance. “I start with nothing in my head. I sit at my desk and draw for 8 hours a day.” By disregarding so much of his own work, Shrigley’s skill lies almost in his ability to decide what to let you see. His primary aim it seems is to create a high standard of visual art, relying more his subconscious to reveal itself in the works, “I just start drawing and see where I end up.” Acting as a commentator on his work, it is both difficult and naive to offer explanations and theories, as it is to fear misunderstanding the artist’s intentions. One naturally assumes that time should be taken to consider and formulate definitive opinions but to do this would be contradictory in light of how Shrigley creates his art: drawing randomly and extrapolating the meaning as a reaction to a particular piece in hindsight. Where Shrigley’s art is concerned, a piece’s meaning is conceptualised after the piece is completed. “I tend to decide what is good and what is meaningful afterwards. I don't know exactly which characteristics I'm looking for. Some things just seem right.” This method could be said to give a false empowerment to the viewer, allowing them to pull their own meaning from the piece. Here, however, is where Shrigley’s skill shines as it his aforementioned control over what you see that fundamentally influences what you may or may not take from the piece. Shrigley’s drawing technique soon becomes referential within it’s own world. As Will Self states in his introduction to Shrigley’s ‘Why We Got the Sack from the Museum (1998) “…after looking over a hundred [of his drawings] there is no plane of reality other than that described by Shrigley.” Shrigley explains that his “technique has evolved out of a desire for simplicity. I try and draw things in a very immediate way. I guess I like crude drawings aesthetically, but they have to communicate ideas.” Though his drawings can be crude he does manage to communicate his ideas very effectively. The artist’s popularity has naturally led to imitation. The ‘Shrigleyian’ style can be seen as an influence in many arenas, both in the work of other artists and more surprisingly in general advertising; Shrigley’s disassociated absurdity being adapted into modern advertising’s increasingly surreal techniques. Shrigley himself finds it difficult to decipher his influence, “Sometimes I look at other artist's work (usually students) who are supposed to have been influenced by me and I can see no similarity whatsoever. Sometimes I look at stuff and it is cringingly familiar- stuff that I understand fully- stuff whose authors I pity.” In regard to his own influences, previous writing on Shrigley has cited the writer Donald Barthelme. Shrigley acknowledges both Barthelme’s use of meta-fiction, commentating upon one’s work within the work itself, and his use of the absurd to facilitate profundity, as an interest that Shrigley has pursued in his own work. Though Shrigley has no desire to move into the literary field, “I don't think I would ever do anything that was exclusively literary. There are enough bad writers in the world,” his ambition to develop greater use of narrative has led him to move away from static images, embarking upon film based projects. “I want to make short films. I've been writing scripts and learning as I do it. It's mostly for animated stuff.” His recent series of short animations, under the title ‘Modern Thought’ for the BBC’s Collective demonstrate how his skewered drawings lend themselves to the media. The short sequences seem a natural progression for his art, though in some cases the need for animation is unnecessary; a still image would be as effective. Enjoyment of art is unavoidably subjective; artists often find their work being criticized as well as praised. Particularly sensitive artists may sometimes find the intrusion of critics undermines the personal subjectivity of their own work. Though Shrigley takes note of what is written of him, “I read almost everything that is written about what I do. I think about what people write. I think it's important to listen to everyone and try to figure out what is useful and what is not,” it seems that for Shrigley, any deconstruction of his work is superfluous or perhaps redundant “Usually when I read something that's written about me I feel like they are writing about someone else. I don't think too hard about what it is that I'm doing in a theoretical sense.” Shrigley states that, “I don't want to explain what I do; I just want to do it.” Perhaps it would be rewarding for all parties concerned to simply leave it at that. |