This Is A Paper Trinket For You To Wear

This compact paperback offers an insight into David Shrigley's inner world through text and illustrations that range from the absurdly comic to the pathetic and tragic. Shrigley was born in Macclesfield and studied at Glasgow School of Art. His drawings, photographs and sculptures often represent mundane situations, while the addition of hand-written and badly spelt texts alter the perspective and confer a tone ranging from the perverse to the surreal. As Shrigley says of his work: "I do what I do in the way that I do it because it's a process of reduction. I'm just trying not to do certain things, rather than being faux-naive. I'm just not interested in rendering spatial relationships. I'm drawing in the most immediate, simple way that I can in order to communicate the things I want to communicate."

Which still does not quite explain why his stuff is so damn good. Crude drawings and text ought not to be so deliriously hilarious, arresting and thought-provoking, but time and again he gets it exactly right. Possibly reminiscent of 'outsider' music/art such as Daniel Johnston, but there is no hint of insanity here, rather a deeply unsettling intelligence and wickedly skewed sense of humour. This book would make a great gift for anyone with a taste for the extraordinary. And you will feel compelled to read it before handing it over.