The mischievous British artist David Shrigley will be making his presence felt in both London and New York this autumn, with major public art commissions on both sides of the Atlantic. In September, New Yorkers will encounter Shrigley's 17-foot-tall granite Public Art Fund sculpture, entitled Memorial, at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza in Central Park (a shopping list will be engraved on the surface—sausages, carrots and milk, and possibly “cleaning stuff” will be inscribed on the imposing civic monument). Meanwhile, the Brighton-based sculptor is due to unveil on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth 29 September his humongous piece, Really Good, showing a hand giving a thumbs up (the thumb is elongated, looking particularly absurd). “Shrigley’s ambition is that this simple gesture will become a self-fulfilling prophecy; that things considered ‘bad’ such as the economy, the weather and society, will benefit from a change of consensus towards positivity,” says an official statement.
