If there is one artist that can bring together both the Nay- and Yea-Sayers of contemporary art, it's David Shrigley. The 43-year old artisan polymath is currently on exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in the Southbank Centre in Brain Activity, the first major survey in the UK of the artist's work, and it couldn't have come at a better time.
Known for his dark humour, absurdist comedy and witty observations on daily life, Shrigley's work could often be mistaken for the crude ramblings and sketches of a wickedly funny cynic. His work extends beyond drawings and into photography, sculpture, animation, painting, music and even taxidermy. Shrigley looks at the Big Things in life, and this show is thematically curated into four sections: Death, Misery, Characters and Misshapen Things. Perhaps it is because it is the big things, the things that affect us all, that can cause us the most mirth, Shrigley delights in these 'dismal realities' and makes us aware of the follies in our concern for these things, these afflictions, that haunt us as Modern Man and Woman.
It might be too much to call David Shrigley a Master of the Universe (in the Tom Wolfe sense of the word) but it's difficult to come out of this show and not think that Shrigley has everything figured out. He doesn't bang us over the head with his interpretations of what Life and Death actually Mean, he get us to look at a marble headstone with a mundane shopping list gold-engraved on it and it dawns on us that when done right art is really a great thing for the soul.
David Shrigley: Brain Activity is at the Hayward Gallery until 13 May 2012.
