The British artist David Shrigley (*1968 in Leicester, lives and works in Glasgow) became internationally known with drawings in black ink – seemingly harmless doodles. Even though Shrigley mainly draws, his approach to the medium of drawing can only be broken. His works are more reminiscent of children's scribbles than of art.
Since the beginning of his career, artist books have played an important role for Shrigley. A total of 15 such books have been published, so far always with black and white drawings.
The artist’s book “Yellow Bird with Worm”, on the other hand, published on the occasion of the David Shrigley exhibition at the Kunsthaus Zurich, concentrates exclusively on Shrigley’s colour works. These paintings on paper were created somewhat after the black-and-white drawings, but are closely related to them in terms of both form and content.
Shrigley’s deliberately clumsy, childlike-looking handwriting finds its counterpart in the format of the artist's book “Yellow Bird with Worm”, which, with its 18 cardboard pages and 16 color illustrations, is reminiscent of the typical picture books for small children. On closer inspection, however, the content of the book turns out to be hardly suitable for children.