What The Hell Are You Doing: The Essential David Shrigley

(Paperback, Main)

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Description

By turns hilarious, satirical, and brilliant, David Shrigley's full-page illustrations - a combination of drawing, comics, photography, and sculpture - are sui generis: uproariously funny, pleasantly unnerving, and, most of all, really, really cool.

Neither graphic novel nor art book, What the Hell Are You Doing celebrates the surreal world of the artist who created Ants Have Sex in Your Beer and To Make the Meringue You Must Beat the Egg Whites Until They Look Like This - the man Dave Eggers calls 'probably the funniest gallery-type artist who ever lived.'

Reviews

* Funny, profound and surprising all at the same time -- Harry Hill * A brilliant new volume Scotland on Sunday * Consistently funny Daily Telegraph * [A] master of modern surrealism ... a must for fans of the absurd Evening Standard * On the kink of his line Shrigley can shift effortlessly from pathos to paranoia. And his work is funny - very funny - his timing devastatingly effective. -- Will Self * Weird, funny, abject, wise, silly, savage, moral and engaging. Independent * 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 * 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 * David Shrigley is a rare thing in the art world: someone whose work people - normal(ish) people - actually love The Skinny * The Glasgow-based artist's scribbly drawings and witty captions have inspired a cult following and a celebrity fanbase including Will Self and Franz Ferdinand. X Magazine * David Shrigley's wonderfully skewed cartoons The Glasgow Herald * Shrigley specialises in the humour of a horny teenage boy crossed with an uptight conservative wrangling with modern moral dilemmas. Needless to say, we are in love. The Gay Times * a must for fans of the absurd ES magazine * Half man, half legend Skinny * Over the 300 or so pages, Shrigley mines a mordant, scatological seam, conjuring up the dark tradition of British humour that threw up Tony Hancock and Chris Morris The Times * Of his 20-odd books, this is by far the best. Plus, he's really famous now, so this might be the only way you'll ever own anything he's drawn X Magazine * A massive yellow compendium of paintings, writings, sculptures and scrawlings from an artist touched by comic genius and something like full-blown lunacy The Lady

Author Bio

David Shrigley was born in Macclesfield in 1968 and studied at Glasgow School of Art. He has worked as a sculptor, photographer and 'environment artist' and, most famously, as a cartoonist and illustrator. His work has been exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, at the MoMA in New York, and in Paris, Berlin, Melbourne and beyond. He has published over twenty books, and has animated a music video for Blur and produced another for Bonny Prince Billy. His work has also been profiled in a documentary for Channel 4 and he was recently invited to hold a major, four-month retrospective at the Hayward Gallery in London. He lives and works in Glasgow.