I Try To Be Friendly
Condition reports and provenance available upon request
About This Work
David Shrigley’s *I Try To Be Friendly* distils his singular blend of deadpan humour and emotional candour into an image of disarming immediacy. Executed with his characteristically economical line and deliberately unpolished draftsmanship, the work foregrounds the expressive potential of apparent simplicity. Shrigley’s sparse composition and direct text operate like a visual punchline, yet the joke lands with poignant ambiguity—hovering between social anxiety, sincerity, and quiet self-reproach. This tension is central to the artist’s wider practice, where everyday frustrations become mirrors for contemporary life. The pared-back aesthetic amplifies the work’s impact, inviting close reading while remaining instantly legible. Significant within Shrigley’s oeuvre, the piece exemplifies how he transforms vernacular drawing into a sharp, culturally resonant commentary on the fragile performance of friendliness.
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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