Talks: David Shrigley

About the Talk

David Shrigley is an internationally-acclaimed artist with a distinctive comedic tone that draws on everyday situations and human interactions to create self-reflexive artworks. While best known for his simple and unique drawing style, Shrigley works in a variety of mediums including photography, sculpture, and film, while also creating public works and artist publications, and collaborating on music projects.

Shrigley’s talk accompanies Public Art Fund’s upcoming exhibition David Shrigley: MEMORIAL, a new public artwork that embodies the artist’s interest in the absurd potential and poignant nature of the everyday. Consisting of a single slab of granite measuring approximately 17 feet by 7 feet with an ordinary grocery list engraved on its surface, MEMORIAL plays on the historical significance of granite public monuments, often found in public parks and erected to celebrate and remember great endeavors. Shrigley’s universal monument, however, pays homage both to no-one and to everyone by honoring and memorializing the mundane act of making a grocery list.

For his talk at The New School, Shrigley will focus on his multidisciplinary practice, including his various works in the public realm, among them Really Good, a ten-foot-tall bronze “thumbs-up” sculpture, to be installed this fall in London’s Trafalgar Square, as part of the city’s Fourth Plinth Commission; his design for Kingsley, the official mascot for a Scottish Premiership football team (2015); and How Are You Feeling?, The High Line’s billboard commission (2012).

Public Art Fund Talks at The New School are organized by the Public Art Fund in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School.

This program is made possible in part by Con Edison and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, as well as by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.