David Shrigley was born in 1968 in Macclesfield, in the United Kingdom. Now based in Glasgow, Scotland, he has shown his work in solo exhibitions at the Camden Arts Center in London; the Hammer Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles; Anton Kern Gallery in New York; and the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Amada Cruz is the director of the Center for Curatorial Studies Museum, Bard College, New York. "Russell Ferguson is a respected curator and writer. Formerly Associate Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, he is now the Chief Curator at the UCLA Hammer Museum." --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

To paraphrase the essayist of this tidy volume, Glasgow is neither here nor there, but then neither is Paris or Milan or New York. If each strives to be the center of the world, they do it primarily by establishing their brand-name products as better than someone else's. The vernacular is universal and the particular is general. What has value in Glasgow therefore has value elsewhere. And thus David Shrigley creates drawings, sculptures, installations and photographs that are no less but no more than a heroic act because they inspire the memory of sensations that are incongruous, repressed and sometimes just simply unpleasant. Featuring a thorough sampling of recent work, a conversation with the artist and the aforementioned essay.