One of Great Britain’s most renowned artists, David Shrigley, presents a new show at Spritmuseum in Sweden this autumn. His Exhibition of Giant Inflatable Swan-things is an installation created exclusively for the museum gallery, which opened on 27 September. Nothing is quite as it seems in Shrigley’s universe. The laws of physics are suspended and the everyday world is distorted, revealing a rare and mordant sense of humour. Welcome down the rabbit-hole!
“We have been eager to host an exhibition by David ever since Spritmuseum opened in 2012,” says Mia Sundberg, curator of the museum’s collection. “I’m especially pleased that we are presenting a new three-dimensional installation. We don’t want to reveal too much, but the title of the show provides a pretty good hint.”
Simple pen and ink drawings with handwritten slogans and puns and a visual idiom reminiscent of comic books and caricatures form the foundation of David Shrigley’s art. He also works in sculpture, large installations, animation, painting, photography and music. With conceptual obstinacy and a satirical undertone, Shrigley addresses themes that mirror everyday life and the ordinary elements of human behaviour, from shopping lists to snippets of overheard conversations. It is inexplicably, madly funny. The dusty-dry, winter-dark humour of Shrigley’s work has been called typically Glaswegian. He grew up in England, in the East Midlands, and moved to Glasgow to study art. Shrigley has described Glasgow as “exciting, different and mystical”– everything that the suburbs of Leicester, where he grew up, were not. Glasgow became his home for 27 years. He now lives in Brighton.