David Shrigley: Lose Your Mind

Ostrich, 2009, David Shrigley

In Ostrich, 2009, a real taxidermied bird has lost his head but gained an absurd menace. This artwork invites us to think about life, death and our relationship with the animal world.

Ostrich is Shrigley’s largest work of taxidermy to date; it is, however, one of several headless specimens that the artist has created, including a headless cat and a headless monkey. For Shrigley the proposition is about an animal that ‘doesn’t have a head and doesn’t have a brain; it never had one and doesn’t need one’. Curator Katrina Schwarz has described this work as the starting point for the planning of the exhibition ‘Lose Your Mind’ and indeed Ostrich has been acquired for the British Council Collection. It is an appropriately absurd fate for Shrigley’s work: a flightless bird, by virtue of entering a touring collection, is now destined to fly the world!

Beginning, Middle and End, David Shrigley

Describing Beginning, Middle and End, continuous looping clay formed on site at the exhibition venue, Shrigley has said “Maybe it’s a metaphor for life: a very short beginning, a very short end, and a huge middle bit where lots of stuff seems to be happening.”

The work is made from 2000kg of clay and was created with the participation of numerous volunteers. This process shares a quality with other Shrigley projects in which he contradicts or wittily ridicules the concept of the artist as sacred or superior.

The Spectre, 2014, David Shrigley

The Spectre, 2014, of the title refers to a secret sculpture – a sculpture that is not exhibited here and indeed which no longer exists. All that remains of the original sculpture is an empty plinth and 298 drawings that testify to its existence and gives us more than a good idea of what the sculpture looked like. Originally created for an exhibition at the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich in 2014, the sculpture was kept in a locked room in the gallery for ten days and was drawn by 100 selected people - children and adults, amateurs and professionals. No photographs of the sculpture were allowed to be taken and it was subsequently destroyed, making the drawings seen in the exhibition is the lasting relic and only evidence of the work.

Untitled Drawings, David Shrigley

This installation of inkjet prints has been selected from an archive of over 1000 drawings that David Shrigley worked on for a full decade (2004-2014). These doodle-like images are the works for which Shrigley is best known and the artist’s view on life is  expressed in their dark humour and cynical wit. The drawings are also powerful in their ability to evoke empathy and recognition from all who experience the frustrations and contradictions of life.

Death Gate, David Shrigley