Laughter is the best medicine: Meet artist David Shrigley

David Shrigley is one of the very few international artists, like Marina Abramović and Banksy, who have broken through the glass walls and ceiling of the art world. His unique drawing style, sharp texts and eccentric sculptures have changed the way we think about art and politics. His practice combines an alarming simplicity with an acute sense of the absurd that exposes the anxieties, contradictions and quiet strangeness of our contemporary existence. For Shrigley, being an artist is not about lofty genius, but about a process of experimentation and reflection.

In 2016, Shrigley created a seven-metre-high thumbs-up sculpture for the Fourth Plinth on London’s Trafalgar Square, with the ambition that the work would become a self-fulfilling prophecy: that things often considered “bad”, such as the economy, the weather and society itself, might benefit from a shift in collective attitude towards optimism.

David Shrigley studied at the Glasgow School of Art and emerged in the 1990s as a key figure in the generation that reshaped British contemporary art. His work has been exhibited widely in museums and galleries around the world, and his public projects have brought his singular voice into shared civic spaces. By pairing wit with unease, Shrigley’s art invites viewers to laugh, pause and reconsider the familiar from an unexpectedly revealing angle.

In February, Stephen Friedman Gallery, which represented both David Shrigley and Kendell Geers closed after 30 years. In January David Shrigley’s exhibition turned out to be an ominous premonition and the final show before the bankruptcy - a ten ton  “pile of old rope” selling for one million pounds. The bankruptcy of London’s leading gallery on Cork Street sent shockwaves across the art world, but what are the artists thinking ? Join them for an animated discussion about the state of the art world, the role of humour in art and why Art Matters