What The Hell Are You Doing?: The Essential David Shrigley

Reviews / Votes

Weird, funny, abject, wise, silly, savage, moral and engaging. * * Independent * * If you're looking for a humour/art crossover, then David Shrigley's stuff is spot on. I like the childlike aspect, and there's a lot of irony. It's a tricky thing to get right; a lot of people try to copy him. You look at some of his stuff and think: I could do that - but, like all great art, all the bits have to be in the right place for it to work. -- Harry Hill David Shrigley is probably the funniest gallery-type artist who ever lived. -- Dave Eggers With a casual gesture Shrigley points to that hideous shape whose name I've never known - and then he names it. And the name is profoundly, embarrassingly familiar. I'm laughing while frantically searching for a pen, so desperate to capture the feeling he has unearthed in me. -- Miranda July An artist who achieves that rarest of phenomena: the capacity to make his audience view the world in his terms entirely. . . [he] takes on everything: memory and forgetting, love and hate, murder and preservation, god and godlessness. -- Will Self Shrigley's comedy appears to confirm the belief of great humourists (from Laurence Sterne to Woody Allen) that laughter is synonymous with hope. In the arena of contemporary art, Shrigley's work maintains a dualism, which is rare, rewarding and ultimately generous. * * Frieze * *