David Shrigley is one of my favourite artist, He is simply amazing, his humour, his sarcasm is really clever. I will show you some sentences from a interview with colour magazine, Canada 2007.
“I understand that, since you were young, your drawings have always been somewhat violent and odd. What do you think draws you to black comedy?
I am a nasty person with a sense of humour.
Most of your work, aside from maybe the animations, tends to function like one-liners. How do you know when you’ve hit on a good one? Do you think calling your work “visual jokes” is too reductive? What makes a joke a good joke?
I guess the test of a joke is whether it is funny or not. If people laugh then it’s funny. I’m not really so interested in telling jokes as such. Most of the time I’m trying to be serious.
Having done music videos for Blur and Bonnie Prince Billy, the art for Deerhoof’s new album, and having your spoken word pieces on Late Night Tales compilations by Four Tet and the Flaming Lips (to say nothing of Worried Noodles), your work is getting to have a strong association with music. Do you think that your work has particular properties that endear it to the indie-rock crowd?
It’s hard to say really. I really like music. It is a very important part of my life. Perhaps music needs some of my pictures in the same way as I need music.
What kind of music have you been listening to lately? Does music inspire your work any major ways?
Lately I have been listening to the recent John Fahey box set on Table of The Elements. It’s very good working music. I also like to listen to Merzbow when I’m working. I didn’t realize that Fahey was really into Merzbow at the end of his life. It really makes sense when I listen to his later recordings. Generally I make drawings to music that doesn’t have much lyrical content. When I’m doing things that don’t require any thought I like to listen to other stuff. I’m a big fan of The Fall.
The term “faux naive” gets tossed around in reference to a lot of contemporary art and illustration, but I think that, whereas a lot of the time, it’s used to generate an aesthetic of nostalgia or cuteness, any naivete of style in your work tends to confront more unsettling issues: marginality, insanity, the infantility of mass culture, so on. Any thoughts?
To draw in the way that I do as a result of a process of reduction. I want to say things as quickly and directly as possible. Whilst I suppose my drawing has become a style I never intended it to be so.”
