Balance The Ball On Your Nose
Condition reports and provenance available upon request
About This Work
David Shrigley’s *Balance The Ball On Your Nose* distils his signature deadpan wit into an economy of line and language. Executed in Shrigley’s characteristically spare, hand-drawn style, the work pairs direct instruction with a deliberately unpolished image, leveraging the aesthetic of the everyday to sharpen its conceptual edge. The absurd directive functions as both encouragement and critique—an emblem of contemporary life’s demand for perpetual self-management, performance, and composure. Shrigley’s reductive technique foregrounds idea over finish, aligning with post-punk graphic sensibilities and the legacy of British conceptual art, while remaining instantly accessible. By collapsing humour and existential unease into a single, memorable proposition, the work offers a culturally resonant meditation on control, vulnerability, and resilience.
About the Artist
David John Shrigley (born 17 September 1968) is a British visual artist. He lived and worked in Glasgow, Scotland for 27 years before moving to Brighton, England in 2015. Shrigley first came to prominence in the 1990s for his distinct line drawings, which often deal with witty, surreal and darkly h...
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Contemporary Art • Hampstead, London
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