Semionaut, Signifying Everything

The New Guernica of Glasgee?

If only most brand collaborations could be as harmonious: Louis Vuitton and Takeshi Murakami; Adidas and Yohji Yamamoto have got nothing on this. David Shrigley’s deformed, hobbled, malnourished sometimes barely human stick figures are some of the most disturbing characters in British art. Shrigley has been commissioned to create the new crest and mascot for Glasgow based Scottish Premier League team Partick Thistle. It seems to be part of the club’s re-positioning towards ‘not so cuddly anymore’ designed to roll back the perception of Partick Thistle FC as harmless or lacking bite.

The Spanish have the word ‘morbo’ (needle) to sum up the rancorous dialectic between opposition clubs that ranges from antagonism to pure hatred – the rivalry between a Real Madrid and Barcelona for example that partly stems from Castilian hegemony and Catalunian autonomy. The exaltation in the pain of one’s nemesis team (for example being relegated), the schadenfreude of watching teams snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, the bitchery on football forums, the exquisite cruelty of football chants. The fact that Crystal Palace fans reveled in the demise of Liverpool two seasons ago because the Heysel stadium disaster had denied them a place in Europe back in 1986! Gary Neville screaming like a pterodactyl at Liverpool fans after a win. I’ll never forget the middle aged female Aston Villa fan – probably delightful outside the footballing context – her face contorted with hateful bile making ‘wanker’ signs as she filed out of White Hart Lane; having been pegged back to 4-4. This all typifies British football.

David Shrigley’s art perfectly complements this ethos. Shrigley’s work is Beavis & Butthead meets Francis Bacon. It is both the adolescent scrawlings in the cubicles of public toilets and the sadistic, existential cruelty of the thwarted adult. A son eviscerating his son for no reason, figures being tortured, barely human creations muddling along in pointless situations, a sort of fake jollity, nonsense creations, logical paradoxes and non sequiturs, as well as just celebrating crapness. David Shrigley, like band Half Man, Half Biscuit in the realm of music (National Shite Day) Shrigley celebrates British (even if not English) cynicism, apathy, bodginess, underachievement and stubborn individualism. This is a cry of anguish from the North – the Guernica of suffering for the long suffering football fan in a custard splodge. This is Millwall’s chant of ‘no-one likes us, we don’t care’ – it is a visual Poznan turning its back on the heraldic propriety of the football club crest.

All that pain and revelling in forever the underdog and the outsider – I can’t think of any image better to represent it. Just as Yoshitomo Nara’s frowning girl represents the disappointed kid in every Japanese salaryman, David Shrigley’s figures represent the grumpy, cynical, snarking, dissenting Brit.

There is something gloriously subversive about this yellow figure and it is a code breaker because it looks intentionally characterful and satirical amongst the faux Disney naffness of football club mascots: shit looking lions, lame dogs, unconvincing roosters; a whole menagerie of plodding, slightly embarrassing, anthropomorphically botched figures that saunter onto the middle of the stadium at half time and half heartedly beckon to the crowd during the game. And there is something genuinely intimidating  about the Kingsley figure too which recommends him (if indeed it is a he), for intimidating the opposition perhaps brandishing a huge can of Irn Bru!

So it seems, everyone’s a winner. Shrigley as Partick Thistle fan gets one of his awkward, slightly obnoxious looking creations onto a football field and Partick Thistle benefit from the dark humour, snarkiness and sardonic perspective that sums up British football culture! Except that some PT fans apparently hate the logo. Some, we imagine might now resemble Kingsley!

© Chris Arning 2015