David Shrigley

British · b. 1968

David Shrigley is one of the most distinctive and widely beloved British artists of his generation. Working primarily in drawing, print, sculpture, animation, and installation, he has developed a visual and textual language — deliberately crude, darkly comic, and philosophically subversive — that is unmistakably his own and has found audiences far beyond the traditional art world.

Born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, Shrigley studied at Glasgow School of Art, where he graduated in 1991. His early work circulated as self-published zines and photocopied drawings — low-tech objects that fitted perfectly with his deliberately anti-polished aesthetic. His books, of which he has published over thirty, remain central to his practice and his reach.

The Work

Shrigley’s drawings are immediately recognizable: scratchy figures, block capital lettering, text that contradicts or undermines the image. They are funny — genuinely funny, which is rare in contemporary art — but the humor consistently edges into anxiety, existential discomfort, and a kind of low-grade dread that makes them linger long after the initial laugh.

His sculptures and public works, including the monumental inflatable “Really Good” installed on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square (2016), demonstrate that his sensibility scales without losing its essential character. He was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2013 and has exhibited extensively at major institutions including the Hayward Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the Kunsthal Rotterdam.

Legacy

Shrigley occupies a unique position: an artist with genuine institutional recognition and a genuinely popular following. His prints are among the most consistently sought-after in the UK contemporary art market and have performed strongly in the secondary market internationally.