INTERVIEW WITH MONOKULTUR, 2007

You once said, 'Everything's got to be as it happens, otherwise it's no good.' Is this your idea of perfection?

I think it is rather a practical thing. The way I work - well, it just doesn't get any better if I do things twice. It's a waste of time. Also, it's a way of getting the best out of me, really. If you know that you are just going to do it once, then that's the way it is. I don't see it as some existential philosophy though - it just refers to my way of drawing. What I do is a process of reduction. I just want to make it as simple as I can. So within this simplicity, it doesn't need to be done more than once.

You also once said that you work from nine to five every day. Does this discipline allow you to set up a framework of controlled spontaneity?

Well I never work nine to five, it's always later in the day. When you are a creative person, it is the starting point that is quite hard, say the first page of the sketch book. Working eight hours a day is my method of getting around it. It's just a period of time I spend working. And what I do within that period of time is irrelevant as long as I am actually making art. I just have faith that what I do will eventually turn into something good and it always has so far. But, you know, it might turn out later that everything I do will be crap and that I have to do something else.

You just said that you work very intuitively: Do you think that craftsmanship can sometimes get in the way?

One of my friends who I share a studio with said something really funny to me the other day. He said, ' Craft is the New Blag,' (blag meaning dishonesty) just like people say, 'Black is the New White.' Craft is something you can hide behind as an artist, something that can be used to justify your position as an artist. But maybe that is very easy for me to say as I apparently don't posses any craft skills. Of course, it doesn't hurt to be a craftsman. If I would speak to students in an art school, I would never say, 'Don't have any craft skills because it's bad.' It's important to have craft skills - just not in my case. Although it is important to a certain extent. I've got to know which way to hold the pen or how to render objective three dimensional spaces on a page. In the end, my skillfulness shows itself in a process of constant reduction, of eliminating the need for smooth surfaces and straight lines.

This DIY aesthetic has become your trademark, something rather childish and crude.

I like the personality of things being a bit half-finished, of basically having a personality. Maybe crudity is the wrong word - a certain amount of personality which is perhaps a bit quirky. I like that word very much, 'quirky.' Also, I suspect that the deformity displayed in my work is a natural curse as I am not very good at rendering beauty. It is much easier to draw creeps than it is to draw beautiful people. I am not very good drawing women, so I end up drawing a lot of deformed men.

What makes this kind of aesthetic so appealing to you?

I don't know - it's like asking, 'How did you get the kind of person you are now?' It would be really strange if you could actually step outside and have some sort of objective opinion about who you are, and what interests and excites you artistically. I am always very suspicious of people who can make those judgments about themselves. I can't. There is a very fine line between being honest and being self-indulgent. And I am probably both.

Also, it would probably sound totally insincere if I started theorizing about my own work as it doesn't come from a theoretical starting point in the first place. My intent is to examine theory in practice, and I don't really want to verbalize what I am doing. My form of communication is very direct anyway. You can't add anything to it by theorizing about it. Whenever I talk to an art critic, they always want you to contextualize your own work and they want you to have some intent. I don't think any artist works that way; I don't think any artist sets about with an intention. Maybe some do - I don't know. I don't really want to think about these things too much, the only questions I ask myself are, 'Have I done that before?' and 'Could I do it better?'

You are based in Glasgow, did you also grow up there?

No, I studied there, I've lived there since 1988. I grew up in Leicester until I was 19, and then I moved to Glasgow. In the beginning, it seemed quite exotic because it is in Scotland and I am from provincial England. It was just the scale and physically, the city looked very exciting to me, these big Victorian buildings and it was very dark and poor. And I couldn't understand anything anybody said for about six months. You feel like you are learning another language.

You never considered moving to London?

No. London is a pain in the ass, frankly. I could live anywhere, I don't really have to live in Glasgow but well, my friends live there. And it is quite a happing place, lots of artists' run projects and musicians. Good things to do, good places to go out, quite a nice community of artists. It has changed since I was twenty-something, but it is a really good place to be.

Are you involved in that scene?

No, not so much anymore. I am too famous. I just drink champagne and buy new trainers...

What about your family - can you tell us a little bit about your background?

My family apparently came over to England with William the Conqueror in 1066. We were arrow bearers for William's army and that's where our name derives from. Shrike meaning arrow bearer; somebody who carries the arrows for the archers. So the archer says, 'Can I have another arrow?' And presumably one of my ancestors said, 'Yes, certainly, Sire. Which kind of arrow do you want?' It's a bit like being a golf caddy . They moved to a tiny place south of Manchester called Pot Shrigley - you can look it up on the map and there is a big stately home called Shrigley Hall.

Your family went from arrow bearers to landowners?

I suppose so; there must have been some landowners at some point. Not that my family is exactly aristocratic. I was the first person in my family ever to get a degree at university - well, art school in my case.

So you didn't grow up in artistic environment?

No, no. My father used to be an electronical engineer. He retrained to work in quality assurance but he is not able to describe to me what that actually means. His use of language is so related to what he does - he uses this particular language, these abbreviations and initials and acronyms - so he is unable to communicate with anybody outside of his field of business. My mother used to be a computer programmer but now she is retired as well. It was her 66th birthday on Tuesday.

What did your parents think of your choice to become an artist? Were there no discussions when you wanted to go to art school?

They are very proud of me... I think my father didn't want me to go but my mother told him to just forget about it. I just always loved art. When I was a little kid, I was probably quite good at drawing but not particularly better than the other kids. At first, I was going to be an astronaut or a pilot. Once I realized that I couldn't be those things, by the age of thirteen or fourteen, I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to be the guy that makes the record covers for Adam and the Ants. I was really into them around that age.

What did your drawings look like at the time?

Similar to what they look like now.

You once said that all types of violence, mayhem and perversity are very appealing to children. To what degree is it still appealing to you?

Well, it is still appealing to me even though I don't think I am a childish person , I think I am fairly clever, not fantastically clever... Perhaps the cruelty I depict is a bit of catharsis in terms of storytelling. In a story there has to be something unusual, violent, something not mundane anyway. I think storytelling is good for my mental health, my state of mind, as all subjects that I touch upon are down to one kind of felt frustration or another, some latent anger. I am not a very aggressive person, I have to say, but I do think that my activities as an artist are good for me personality wise. I feel calm when I am being creative.

In Worried Noodles , you have written song texts which read like little stories or even poetry. How much of a storyteller are you?

I am very aware that the stories I tell in a drawing or in a page of text are ways of forming a narrative, whereby you just give people the most basic parts. In the best case, the reader forms the rest of the narrative themselves. Also, I've gone on to making films, which usually requires something more conventional in terms of narrative.

Still, it's characteristic for your work that you withhold crucial bits of information.

I suppose holding back information works like a catalyst. Sometimes you only have to say a certain amount and it captures people's imagination. If you need to describe everything, tell the story in full, then perhaps you're probably not telling it very well.

Do you feel more and more drawn towards writing? Your work seems to develop into that direction, towards storytelling.

Yes, I believe so. Writing is difficult, though. Doing drawings and writing one phrase underneath it is quite formulaic, it is quite an easy thing to do. To write a page of text that is really resonant and meaningful is perhaps a more difficult exercise compared to what I do. So I don't really consider myself as a writer. People often say nice things to me about what I have written in my books, saying that I could be a writer. But the reality is, I probably couldn't. I couldn't even write a short story, I don't think.

How about the relation of images and words in your drawings then - are they supposed to stand in some sort of dialogue, to comment on each other?

Well, sometimes they don't comment on each other at all. The words don't describe the pictures and the pictures don't illustrate the text. Ideally, that is the relationship I want them to have. They are two things and their relationship is still somehow awkward and has a friction to it.

Is it because a similar discrepancy and awkwardness that you like Found Art as it is characterized by a certain lack of information?

What I like about found art is that it always exists out of its context. Once it is found, it ceases to be in a context anymore.

You mean not in its original context...

Yeah. And I think it is this particular context which is the interesting part. I like the fact, that you can take a tiny piece of conversation, or the way somebody describes something, and use it as a quote. It can seem somehow absurd or profound whereas within the context, in which it was said, it was probably just a normal piece of communication. I like the fact that you're always guessing at the context in which it was played. But I don't think you can actually trade in the stuff, you know, put a price on them, like they do in Found magazine. I don't think these things should belong to anybody. They belong to all humanity. Also, it can be very voyeuristic as well, which definitely is fascinating but then again has a limit to it. Reading a love letter, written by some slightly illiterate teenager, is hilarious but you still kind of feel like, 'I am not sure if I am supposed to be reading this.'

Looking at your work one doesn't necessarily get the impression that you are trying to be overtly correct.

There are certain lines which I just would not cross. But then again, as an artist, I am also playing a part. The narrator in my work is somebody other than me. It's some crazed person who either over or under-moralizes everything. And, naturally, I expect people to understand that. It would be a terrible thing to actually speak in this way about the disabled (for example) in front of a person who had a disability. On the other hand, if you tie yourself up in knots about being politically correct, about not to touching upon certain issues in your work then I don't think this kind of self-censorship will work. Sometimes I might accidentally step over a certain line but that's a risk worth taking. In the end, it's a very subjective judgment if people feel offended by something. I mean, I get really offended sometimes reading the newspaper and think, 'How dare they write this in the papers!' The way for example, the conflict in the Middle East is accounted for, shows a real lack of empathy with other human beings and to me constitutes a giant moral transgression. I can't imagine people reacting like this towards my work.

Do you feel like giving you works this political stance, too?

I'd like to be more overtly political but it's difficult because I work so intuitively. I can only touch upon political issues in a very non-specific way.

But you are fed up with the British aristocracy - that much you make quite clear.

It is quite reasonable to ridicule the royal family, I think. I'd like to do away with them. I am very critical of the current regime in the United Kingdom. I think there is too much inequality in society. But I don't mention many real people in my work apart from the Queen, the Prince of Wales, and God .... and the devil of course.

Your work is very playful and as a result very funny. Does the absence of play in art mean total calamity to you?

My art certainly is frivolous and hopefully easy to digest. Art would probably be quite tedious and theoretical, if it only strived to be serious. I am not one of those artists who see their work in the context of art history. I would still do art even if I earned my money with something else. I don't see anything particularly virtuous about what I do. I think art can take many different forms . It just leads you back to the definition of what art is and that, I think, is really a question of intent. I suppose there are just two types of art: successful and unsuccessful art.

In what sense do you mean 'successful' and 'unsuccessful'?

You have to judge each artwork within its own terms. Whereas 'good' or 'bad' imply a lot of subjectivity, 'successful' and 'unsuccessful' allow you to judge it in its own terms and thus also to be more objective. It's hard to speak in the abstract but I suppose in my case, it would mean that if I try to do something funny and it simply is not funny, then it's not good art.

Why is it so important to you to be funny?

For me everything has to have some kind of humor to it because that's the way life is. It's funny, and it's sad and bad at the same time. I didn't really understand when I was in art school why my tutors thought it was a bad idea to make art which is a bit stupid.

Of course there are a lot of other emotions you want to provoke as well. I don't think of my art as only being humorous and I don't think it's that funny. If something only exists to make somebody else laugh, it's comedy but it's not art. Art is all these things; it has many facets of which humor can be one. I want to make art works that people like and will not just see as comedy but as some kind of comment as well. If I really wanted to be funny, I would try be a comedian. I guess my art is just funny because I am a funny guy...

Your sense of humor can be very cruel, for example in the way you depict rather unexpected scenarios of sudden death.

In a philosophical sense, my art is very fatalistic. But hopefully the humor redeems it slightly from being just depressing. And when it comes to death - well, I prefer to see the humorous side of it as you can't change anything about it anyway. Also, I think if you try to make some sort of fine gesture about the portrayal of God or the state of the world, you will inevitably fail. The only profundity you should ever achieve is in the particular, in very specific and personal things.

Actually, I had a conversation with to my grandmother last week which was really hilarious. My parents are in New Zealand at the moment and can't look after her. So I have to call her every day while they are away. She is 93 and lives in an old peoples home. Yesterday she said to me, 'Oh, this morning somebody died in the dining room. We were all having lunch and this woman just dropped down dead. She was on our table and she was having an apple pie and the next minute she was dead.' When I asked her what she did, you just said: 'I didn't do anything. I just finished my apple pie and went back to my room.' None of them really cared at all. The only people who care about the inmates dying in theses places are the people who work there I guess. But the old people themselves couldn't care less whether they die or not.

Is the kind of impatience you referred to about the way you work a relief for you as well as simply playing with a state of 'not-knowing'?

I've been a professional artist for ten years, which is great, a great situation to be in. And of course, I am grateful for that. But you also have to surprise yourself again and again. Taking this into account, I think you have to accept that sometimes the things you do are going to be very awkward and are not going to work very well. I don't want to do the same thing twice, even if it works. There is nothing worse than feeling you are doing the same thing over and over again, just to make a living. With fine art - I suppose I am more of a fine artist in the sense that I show in galleries and sell my work to rich people - you are likely to feel that you are making a product, a very expensive product to sell in a shop. I never really wanted to feel this way.

With your work, one can never be quite sure whether to define it as art or not, even though you obviously work within that framework. How do you see yourself in relation to the art world?

Of course I see myself as some kind of maverick genius... No, really, I do see myself as a fine artist. I don't really understand why people think I might be something else. I've always been a fine artist, I studied art and I make a living in the world of fine art. It wouldn't make sense if I simply said I am an illustrator or cartoonist. Technically I am not. I may do those things but it is very peripheral to what I do on a regular basis.

One gets the impression that you take quite an ironic stance toward the art world as for example in works like Art Lovers . Are you really as reserved as it sometimes seems?

I guess it is just in my nature that I have to ridicule absolutely everything, including myself. But then again, as I said before, I am only playing a part. I love art; I go to galleries and buy art. And whilst I think the art world is ridiculous, it is no more ridiculous than anything else. And at least, it is true to itself unlike the world of fashion. And when it comes to selling art, the price I pay is that rich people have my artwork on a wall in their home. And I think it's nice that people like something well enough to spend money on it and have in their homes. Apart from that, there is only so much room you have in your apartment. You simply have to sell things. There are still so many drawings that I do in the course of year. Every two months I have to shove them in huge plastic sacks and throw them away. I used to tear them up and use them as shopping lists - but I don't do that much shopping.

Are you always sure about which drawings you like and which are the ones you will finally discard?

I am always sure, yeah. I have a working method whereby I leave things for a certain period of time and then decide if they are good. There is something very definite that I can realize about them. If I gave somebody a hundred drawings that I have done within a month and ask them to select the ones that are going to be finished, I am sure that probably everybody would choose a different ones. To me, it is glaringly obvious which the good ones are . And I don't really want to think about why anybody else chooses anything different. It is not helpful.

Your work has appeared in so many contexts, in books, galleries, museums, ads. What kind of place to you think is best suited for it?

Probably books are the nicest place to see my work. Reading a book is very personal and private; you can just enjoy it for what it is. Also, I like books because they are accessible to everybody. There isn't that burden of it being art. People can just buy them and see my work for what it is - as funny drawings. Galleries, on the other hand, just as the whole world of fine art, can be quite intimidating and inaccessible for some people. If my mother went into a gallery to look at art, she probably wouldn't really know how to behave, for example, she wouldn't know how long to look at the artworks for. But then again it doesn't really matter whether people see (my work) on a web site, a wall, or in a newspaper. There is no ideal place. When you are making a piece of art, it's nice to know that it can also exist in another context and still be successful, that it can still communicate to people. In the end it's just the quality of the work that is important.

You chose a rather conventional way into the art world by going to university and studying art. Did you enjoy this time?

I enjoyed it, yes. It's a long time ago and I was only at art school for three or four years. I don't think it was that important though. The things you really learn, you learn form doing, from experience and in a way, when you're at art school, you are not really making any art that is going to last. I had a really good time there but I wasn't a star student at all. Most of the time, I think, they didn't really understand what I was doing and thought that I was a bit of an idiot.

How did you manage the transition from college to working as an artist?

When I first left art school fifteen years ago, I started publishing my own books. Armpit Press was my imprint because at that time, nobody published what I did. In reality, I was the worst publisher in the world. Friends asked me to bring out their work and obviously, they thought I knew how to do it. But I couldn't really be bothered. I just gave them the ISBN number and told them what to do.

Through making the books I was asked to publish an artist book with a proper publisher ( Bookworks) I didn't really have any understanding of what an artist book was at that time, I thought it was something precious and strange. And then suddenly it became very successful and the guy who edited my book wrote an article about me in an art magazine. So all of a sudden, I was on the cover of this art magazine in 1995 and, you know, that was me! And I thought, 'Wow, you must be a successful artist!' I mean, I only had one exhibition with some friends in Glasgow up to that date. At that time though, I had no understanding or ambition to be a fine artist. I never thought that I would be living the life that I live now. I guess the fine art world was most sympathetic to what I did . So I was like, 'Yeah, cool, I'll do whatever you want, I'll say whatever you want - as long as I can continue to do what I enjoy doing.' So things slowly developed from there. I was able to do different stuff and managed to make a living from that. It was only later that I started to do things within mass media, like having my work published by mainstream publishers, doing pop videos or cartoon for The Guardian.

Do you enjoy doing the commercial work you made?

Not really. I don't think I would do it again. I mean, I did enjoy doing it but it's a bit boring ultimately and creatively, well - there is always someone telling you what to do. Basically, if somebody came along and said, 'I'll give you a huge amount of money and you can do whatever you want, but it is going to be advertising,' then I'll do it. But if somebody said, 'We'll give you this huge amount of money but you'll have to do exactly as you are told,' then there is no way I would do it.

This sounds like a comfortable position to be in - do you remember what kind of jobs you had to do when you started out?

Oh, I did a lot of odd jobs at the time, I helped people with building shelves or sanding floors... I worked in an art gallery for a while and installed other people's exhibitions. Also, for a while I was with a performance group called Mischief La Bas . It was the most awful pretentious crap you have seen in your entire life. I got paid to do it, twenty pounds to stand there for an hour, in my underpants, getting covered in spaghetti. I think it was because I was the youngest in the group and my body was the most presentable - the others were a bit older and a bit fat. So I just stood there in my underpants and this guy, dressed as a chef, was layering spaghetti on top of me. It was incredibly embarrassing and the only way I could get through it was to get really stoned. I just lost my power of speech.

Being with a group called Mischief La Bas , I was supposed to pretend that I'm foreign and speak French only. But then again, I don't understand why it is more acceptable to pretend that you are French than it is to actually acknowledge the fact that what you're doing is art. Anyway, this was the point where I left and started a band.

Your own band? What instruments do you play?

I play the guitar and sing. The band was called Parcark . The good thing about it was that I got to write the songs and lyrics, even though I think I was the least talented member of the band. But nobody wanted to take responsibility creatively, so I did it all. We were not very good. That was ten years ago. Curiously, I made my first record this year. It's kind of a spoken word record that I made with my friend Martin. It is released by a small label in London called Azuli Records. I wanted to use the name of my old band but they wanted to use my name as the title. First I thought about calling it the David Shrigley Male Voice Choir but eventually we decided on Shrigley Forced To Speak With Others.

So do you enjoy being on stage?

We are not going to play live. I did play live - but that was just some Rock 'n Roll dream I had. I think the world of rock'n'roll is a bit wanky, it's full of idiots. The whole ethos of rock'n'roll seems very questionable to me, as it's all about ego. Spiritually it's just totally backwards. It's absolutely no wonder that rock'n'roll stars end up being addicted to drugs and very unhappy. They live up to this really unrealistic aspiration, to be the center of attention, to be beautiful, to be sexy, dynamic. So, basically, everything that will make you into a bad human being will make you into a good rock star.

You also have done some pop videos, for Blur and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, and started producing your own films such as WHO I AM AND WHAT I WANT which you recently presented in Berlin.

What I like about making films is that I am totally at the beginning of something and that I have to learn a lot. I feel quite happy about that. As I said - you have to surprise yourself. But to be honest, I don't think I am very good at it. I haven't made anything that I think is really fantastic. I think of the art works I made so far, the drawings, or some of them, have been the most successful things I have made.

Usually, films are made in cooperation with others, which is quite different from you working on your drawings all by yourself. Do you enjoy working together with other people?

With films of course, it's different. Through necessity you have to have a lot of people because technically, you just can't do it by yourself. At least I can't. Even though WHO I AM AND WHAT I WANT visually looks like my work (it is my drawings that have been animated and my words that are being spoken) it is a collaboration. In the future though, I don't think I will do another collaboration. I don't really like it. Not that I don't like the films I have made so far, but I just like to do things a little differently, retain my own voice for example. I started working on films at home now and hopefully, this will work out better. When you are cooperating, everything will be discussed and that can be a bit tedious. You keep telling the animators, who are technically very professional, again and again how you want it to be done, 'Imagine you are me - and you can't draw.' Then you have to go behind them, take their hand and go, 'No, no no... No straight lines.'

You don't like straight lines, do you?

I like straight lines. But they don't have to be parallel.

 

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