Who Is.. David Shrigley

The celebrated art of David Shrigley is a type of bizarrely irresistible craze level genius using cult-like + highly sarcastic humour to navigate his vision of everyday situations + the funny, sometimes misunderstood + often awkward human interactions. Seemingly inconsequential at the surface, his continuously fragmented narrative is satisfied with surreal bursts of deadpan hilarity + comes to life in the form of his now world-famous child-like texts + illustrations. 

Born in Macclesfield, Cheshire in the United Kingdom in 1968, Shrigley studied at the Glasgow School of art in 1991 where he then lived + worked for 27 years before more recently moving to Brighton in 2015. He finds inspiration for his pieces through the medium of (overheard) conversation + snippets of text from just about anywhere. Crude + at times ‘out there’ in terms of his messages, Shrigley confesses to being a complete outsider in the art world. His art possesses a sense of dark humour, as though he’s a rather wisest young child observing the adult world through a deeply witty, sometimes dirty lens. It’s a kind of genius. 

Although best known for his fascinating drawings, his work doesn’t finish there. Finding himself in a variety of other mediums including music, photography, large-scale installations, sculpture, painting + animation, he’s got a penchant for keeping things fun no matter the means of expression. 

Shrigley’s art has been the subject of major solo shows around the world including exhibitions at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, the Kelvingrove Art Gallery + Museum in Glasgow, + the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles while his works are included in seriously prominent collections around the world including MoMa NY, tate, London, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, Thyssen-Bornemisza Contemporary Art Foundation, Vienna, Austria + Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Scotland among others. He was nominated for the prestigious Turner Prize for his solo show David Shrigley: Brain Activity which came after a major mid-career retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London in 2013. His pieces have been commissioned for massive public display, most notably his monumental sculptural creation, ‘Really Good' which was unveiled in Trafalgar Square, London for the Fourth Plinth Commission. Just this year, in January the artist was awarded the decoration of Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, also know an OBE.

Despite feeling on the periphery of his own industry, he’s most certainly know by the in crowd. You can dine in what is essentially a gallery of Shrigley’s  exclusive creations which he made specifically for the popular restaurant in London, Sketch. Par for the course, excuse the pun, of course is it’s Instagramable pink interiors which play as the backdrop to his vision. 

David Shrigley is the king of the most elegant type of rude + crude when it comes to his drawings; simultaneously smart-ass + smart. Deadpan humour has never been more fun or fabulous, chic or wonderful. 

Find out more at davidshrigley.com

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Who Is.. Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic, pronounced [marǐːna abrǎːmoʋitɕ], is a Serbian conceptual + performance artist, writer, + art filmmaker known specifically for her avant-garde performance pieces + the use of her own body as both material + subject for her own work. Born November 30, 1946, Belgrade, Yugoslavia (now in Serbia) Abramovic grew up in her homeland, raised by her parents both of whom fought as Partisans in WWII, later going on to be employed by the communist government of Josip Broz Tito. Escaping her unsettling + abusive home life, she decided to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade to study painting. However within a short time she came to understand the importance + relevance of performance art for which her love + passion naturally made it’s way into her creative sphere as her strongest medium of expression + the one that would bring her career to the forefront, making her the worlds most notable + celebrated performance artist of the 21st century. 

In her most prolific work, Abramovic has used her own physical form in dramatic ways to test the sufferance + restrictions of her body + mind. One of her initial performative pieces was Rhythm 0 (1974) in which she stood completely still in a room for 6 hours amid 72 other objects of her choice, ranging from a rose to a loaded gun. As guests entered the room they were encouraged to do whatever they wished toward her with any of the objects. This was the beginning of the controversy that would surround her work for many years to come, not only due to the nature of the piece but also her total nudity during the 6 hours.

Moving to Amsterdam in 1975 she began collaborating with German artist Ulay who, with a similar liking to proactive artist experiences, she created another one of her most talked about pieces. In Imponderabilia (1977), the two artists stood naked in an extremely narrow corridor in a museum, facing each other. In order for visitors of the exhibition to move through the piece to the next room they were forced to slip by the naked bodies of the artist + in doing so chose who to face so intimately. Ulay + Abramovic continued to explore gender identity in their collaborations throughout their years of working together. 

Struggling to make her mark on the industry in any lasting and reputable manner came to a abrupt end, when in 1997, she won the Golden Lion for best artist at the Venice Biennale, an accolade that raised her profile in ways she hadn’t previously imagined. Another moment that caught the attention of world, both inside and out the art world was in bringing The House with the Ocean View (2002) to life. In this piece Abramovic created a gallery installation in which she lived by herself with severe abstention + deprivation, all the while exposed in three transparent cubes mounted to the gallery wall for 12 days straight.

Seeing the honour she deserved, MoMA held a large retrospective of the artists work titled, The Artist is Present, in 2010. As part of the presentation she debuted an eponymous performance piece which was staged in a large room at the infamous museum. The piece consisted solely of the artist + two chairs. Sitting in one, she remained in complete silence every day as visitors to the exhibit were invited to sit with her in the available seat, staying for as long as they wished, staring at her as she did nothing but gaze back. Seeking to call to the surface emotions from deep within that only such a silence + space in a strangers company could evoke, the exhibition proved hugely popular at a human level + there were constant lines formed just to get in. It ran for a solid three months in which she turned up every single day, sitting for the whole 7-hour opening time of the museum. From that came the documentary, The Artist Is Present, which chronicled the preparations for piece along with what followed which was her work suddenly sitting in the spotlight the world over. 

Considering the fact that, as primarily a performance artist, it’s difficult, if not completely impossible, to own or show work that holds any monetary value or life beyond their original stagings, Abramovic can hold pride in a career that has spanned four decades with her work touching the lives + should of varying group of people far + wide. Her pioneering work has ultimately paved the way for artists + appreciators as a way to ask bigger questions - both of themselves + of the external pressures + societal conforms that either restrict or liberalise the mind. Her innate hunger to challenge these restrictions, whether real or perceived, has won her a place as one of the most remarkable, brave + significant artists of our time. 

She currently lives and works in New York.

All images my own, taken at the Marina Abramovic exhibit at the RA, 2023

Who Is.. Cindy Sherman

Cynthia Morris Sherman was born in New Jersey on January 19, 1954 and is one of the contemporary art world’s most influential and consequential living female photographers. More widely known as Cindy Sherman, her career as an artist has spanned nearly 40 years and throughout she has exclusively created photographic self-portraits that explore, with a strong streak of feminist  messages, the construction of modern day life, drawing on social role-playing and sexual stereotypes. Socially critical and amusing, her work is never far from the truth; mirroring the realities of our time with a sustained and precise fabrication that forces the viewer to take a deep breath in personal recognition or perhaps a wider, more general appreciation of it’s greater meaning.

Sherman is an interesting and interested character. Upon graduating from the State University of New York in 1976 she moved away from painting and began what would become her life’s work beginning with Complete Untitled Film Stills (1977-1978) which would remain one of her most seminal series and consisted of 69 black-and-white images. In the 1980’s she moved on to colour film and larger more mammoth productions focusing slightly more on the use of lighting and facial expression. She has since, at different times, focused on directing motion film between her famous photographic series. But her photography remains her most celebrated and revered work. 

In every series of creations, Sherman works as her own subject while capturing herself in an endless range of pretences and guises. In the creation of one or any of her photographs, she is everything all at once, from makeup-artist and hair-stylist to creative stylist, creative director and of course, photographer. All of this means she stands alone in the industry, in which she is typically grouped within the era of the Pictures Generation, through her distinctive mix of performance and photography. Drawing upon film, fashion and a lot of influential and commercial advertisements, she ironically plays into with the cultural stereotypes that are massively supported and encouraged by such media portals and draws upon her belief that we must challenge them with a sense of sharpness and dark humour. In her processes, she uses wigs, prosthetics accessories, liberal amounts of makeup and set designs that all enable her visions to come to life. 

Sherman has been the subject of many major museum exhibitions, most recently at MoMA in 2019 and again at the National Portrait Gallery, in London which also showed this year. She lives in New York City where she also works in solitary in her Manhattan studio.