DAVID SHRIGLEY

Early Years

Born in 1968 in Macclesfield, Shrigley grew up in Leicestershire, England, and studied at Glasgow School of Art in Scotland between1988–1991. He then moved to Brighton, and later to Devon. During the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2020, he produced hundreds of new drawings that he posted on Instagram but that were also exhibited online by Stephen Friedman and Anton Kern. He was awarded the OBE in 2022.

David Shrigley: Artworks

Central to Shrigley’s practice are his drawings, rendered often as childlike doodles and accompanied by short texts. He uses dark humour, satire and commentary to highlight the idiosyncrasies of everyday life and the frequent illogicality of human behaviour.

He has also used taxidermy animals to highlight the relationship between words and images—for example, 2009’s headless Ostrich cannot, as the familiar phrase would have us believe, bury its head in the sand. The I’m Dead series features a taxidermy dog and cat holding up signs displaying the works’ title: animals cannot communicate in the English language... but dead ones cannot communicate at all. This again highlights Shrigley’s use of humour in bleak situations.

During his residency at Two Rooms in Auckland in 2015, Shrigley initiated the “Sixteen paintings in sixteen days” project (the first time he had painted with oils on stretched canvas since art school). At the time he discussed the difference between painting and drawing, noting his complete freedom with the latter, describing the medium as “a comfortable thing for me that’s very easy to produce”.

• Shrigley’s books of drawings include Why We Got the Sack from the Museum (1998) and Ants Have Sex in Your Beer (2007) and Get Your Shit Together (2022).
• Untitled (Bad Habits) (2022) features a side profile of a green cat smoking a cigarette. Fur is realised through brushstrokes while blue whiskers convey a mixture of cross and cool—very much like a cat, in fact.
• 2024’s My Work is Widely Misunderstood is an ink-on-paper drawing featuring concentric circles and curved lines reminiscent of a vinyl record.

Select Public Commissions

In 2016, the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square in London held David Shrigley’s Really Good, a seven-metre-high bronze hand giving a thumbs-up gesture (with a disproportionately long thumb). The dark patina of the sculpture matched other plinths in the square. At the time,the London Assembly said: “Shrigley’s ambition is that this simple gesture will become a self-fulfilling prophecy; that things considered ‘bad’ such as the economy, the weather and society, will benefit from a change of consensus towards positivity.”

David Shrigley: Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• David Shrigley: What the Hell was I Thinking, Kunsthal Rotterdam (2025–2026)
• David Shrigley: Exhibition of Old Rope, Stephen Friedman Gallery, London (2025)
• Copenhagen Prints, Jealous Gallery, London (2024)
• People Reveal Themselves Slowly, Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen (2024)
• Melbourne Tennis Ball Exchange, Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2023)
• Really Good, Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2023)
• Pulped Fiction, Oxfam Books & Music, Swansea (2023)
• Proposals for Record Covers, Galerie Francseca Pia, Zurich (2022)
• Before the Lawn Takes Its Revenge_..._ Collection Lambert, Avignon (2021–2022)
• Clarity: It is Very Important, Yumiko Chiba Associates, Tokyo (2020)
• Do Not Touch the Worms, Copenhagen Contemporary (2020)
• Fond Memories of Giant Bug, Jiri Svestka Gallery, Prague (2020)
• Fluff War, Anton Kern Gallery, New York City (2019)
• Do it (do not do it), Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City (2019)
• Life and Life Drawing, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (2014)
• Brain Activity, The Hayward Gallery, London (2012)

Select Group Exhibitions

• The Horror Show! Somerset House, London (2022)
• Animals in Art, Arken Museum of Modern Art (2020)
• Lines from Scotland, St Andrews Museum (2019)
• Playmode, Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon (2019)
• The Stage is Yours, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki (2019)
• Sweats & Tears, saasfee* pavilion, Berlin (2018)
• Takashi Murakami’s Superflat Collection, Yokohama Museum of Art (2016)
• Devils in the Making, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2015)

Further reading

• David Shrigley’s Instagram
• A 2015 conversation with Ocula
• David Shrigley’s official website
• A 2022 interview with David Shrigley from the Guardian
• Q&A in Country & Town House magazine from 2025
• David Shrigley’s page at Tate

David Shrigley FAQs

Ocula