David Shrigley’s outsider illustrations

Concerned about the breakdown of society? Fear not: David Shrigley has a plan

David Shrigley has always been difficult to categorise. His scrappy, scratchy, annotated line drawings seem too surreal for him to be labelled a cartoonist, while also too humorous and self-satirising for him to be readily accepted into the ranks of contemporary artists. Does Shrigley care? Almost certainly not, as his new book, Fully Coherent Plan makes clear.

Over 250 pages, Shrigley draws angry faces, sinister cats, and small, flaccid penises in order to present ideas for a better society that range from absurdist satire to just plain old absurd. “I invite you to imagine a plan for a new and better society where everything is very coherent and makes a lot of sense and nothing is confusing or awful,” writes Shrigley, though, of course, he intends nothing of the kind. In satirising the language of theorists and bureaucrats — the lists and diktats in this book recall both landmark political manifestos and also those “no heavy petting” signs you used to get in swimming pools — Shrigley points politely towards the ridiculous and arbitrary nature of the societal strictures by which we all abide and from which he seems so blissfully free.

— Fully Coherent Plan (Canongate) is published on 3 May; Shrigley is also the guest director of this year’s Brighton Festival, 5–27 May,

brightonfestival.org