WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? THE ESSENTIAL DAVID SHRIGLEY

David Shrigley

Canongate

Who doesn’t like David Shrigley? That’s right, no one. I am reliably informed that even Nan Goldin owns a set of his “cocaine” and “heroin” salt and pepper pots, so there you go. We haven’t caught up with David since we talked to him about his Worried Noodles project a couple of years back. Now, he is about to release a massive retrospective book so we figured it’s as good a time as any to talk to him again.

VICE: Hello David. Is this book like your greatest hits album?

David Shrigley:

I guess there is an element of it being a greatest hits package. But it has a lot of stuff that might have been seen in other places but haven’t been published so there’s lots of things that people won’t have seen before. I really enjoyed putting it together, and it looks and feels quite different to the other books I’ve done. There’s a lot of colour in it and we spent a lot of time editing it and a lot of time figuring out how to present the drawings. There’s a lot of books I’ve done where I haven’t been that happy with the way they’ve been put together or come out. This is a bit more fancy. It is probably the book I am proudest of putting out so far.

You’re so prolific that you make 99 percent of other artists look bone idle. Was it tough trawling through it all and deciding what would go in?

It wasn’t really that tough but the difficulty came from deciding what constitutes a greatest hit really. I’m sure there wouldn’t be that much consensus what constitutes my classic work if you asked a load of different people, so we just went with what felt right.

You’re probably best known for your drawings, but the range of stuff in the book might surprise some people.

Yes, there is a bit of photographic work in there and some sculpture stuff that I’ve made, so it probably represents a broader range of my work than people might be used to.

How did Will Self end up writing the foreword?

He’s written stuff about my work before and I’ve done drawings for him, so I’m acquainted with him in a professional way. I wouldn’t say we associate all the time personally but I really like his writing and he’s always been really supportive of what I do. I love his novels and think it is fantastic that someone is still out there writing that kind of sharp, concise short stuff. He’s the man as far as I’m concerned.

You have worked a lot in collaboration over the course of your career—do you get easily bored working on your own?

Not really, I just like projects. I think that when you’re an artist the hardest thing when it comes to producing work is to have a starting point. When you collaborate on a specific project, you have that starting point. For me, it just makes it much easier to get going.

This issue is entitled "The Where The Hell Are We And How Are We Gonna Out Of Here?" When was the last time you felt like that?

That is a great title. I actually felt exactly like that last week. I have lived in Glasgow since 1988 and really like Glasgow It has everything I need to do what I do but the weather is totally crap. I am in Malaga right now and here it is 34 degrees and the sun is shining. I can guarantee that in Glasgow it is currently raining. Everyone needs to get away and get in the sun occasionally. I recommend it, it tops your vitamin D levels up. Anyway, when I got here the car rental place gave me this horrible Nissan Micra. I was on my way to pick up a friend from the airport in the horrible Micra and there is this weird thing in Spain where every road you try and drive down seems to be in the midst of being built. I ended up getting totally lost and somehow winding up in a very dodgy bit of town and then the horrible Micra got a flat tyre. As soon as we stopped we were surrounded by people you didn’t really want to be surrounded by, but somehow feigned foreign innocence and managed to get the wheel changed and escape along this semi-made road on one of those pathetic little replacement wheels. It wasn’t a great situation.

JAMES KNIGHT

canongate.net

RASPBERRY 3

Jack Bechtler

Self-published

Reguar readers of the literary section of this magazine you might remember the first issue of

Raspberry

being showered with praise. The third installment is now upon us and is no less praise-worthy. 3D graffiti done by Dutch IT experts on governmentally designated walls bores the tits off any normal person, but

Raspberry

highlights the infinitely more beguiling, funny and interesting aspects of signwriting and the defacing of man-made and natural surfaces.

raspberrymag@gmail.com

PALAIS

Lewis Wright

Self-published

Another day, another photo zine. But unlike most photo zines this one is not packed with skateboarders gnarling-out and throwing cans of beer around or intentionally shitty-looking photocopies. It is a big pile of black and white photos taken over a number of trips around Europe that switch from the abstract to starkly obvious, exploring different textures and the effects of light. What more could you want than a shot of a sugary doughnut a few page turns from a picture of a man’s genitals stuffed into a bikini underwater?

PaperBuoy.com

ROLE MODELS

John Waters

Beautiful Books

Role Models

is the ultimate gift from the ultimate role model to his fans: a self-portrait of intimate musings and insight into events and personalities that influence Waters and helped make him, well, him.

Role Models

will inspire you and make you feel better about life and if it doesn’t then you need to take a long hard look at yourself. The book culminates in a chapter called “Cult Leader”, which invites his deviant readers on a spiritual pilgrimage to Baltimore, detailing a wet dream of mine—that Waters could someday make the transition from cult filmmaker to bona fide cult leader. He outlines a fantasy where we, his fans-turned-disciples of bad taste, live in perverse, subversive harmony as “Saints of Sordidness”, fulfilling the unique brand of neurotic happiness of our Pope of Trash. I just wonder if Waters realises the self-fulfilling prophecy he may have penned? Just say the word, John, and we’ll be at your side quicker than you can say “Free Leslie Van Houten”. It is reassuring that at the ripe old age of 64, Waters is still flying the flag for transgressives and non-conformists everywhere, ensuring that none of us ever need to grow up and make any concessions to normality, or, worse still, start wearing sensible shoes.

beautiful-books.co.uk

NINJA TURTLE SEX MUSEUM

James Unsworth

Ditto

Like hardcore gay pornography? Like the Ninja Turtles? Of course you do, but did you ever think about combining the two? Well, James Unsworth did, and then he made it happen. This may well be one of the most depraved books to cross my desk in the last few years, and considering the things that people see fit to send me, that is saying a lot. But, unlike

Sorority Sisters Go Wild In Werewolf Wisconsin 15

, this is funny, weird, and quite unnerving. Not just a bad porn film drawn with an airbrush.

dittopress.co.uk

WHY BE SOMETHING THAT YOU’RE NOT—DETROIT HARDCORE 1970–1985

Tony Rettman

Revelation

You may already be aware of this tome, which deals pretty much with exactly with what the title says, thanks to the discussion that we ran between Tony Rettman and Tesco Vee (who wrote the book’s foreword) on Viceland.com. If you missed that and you’re into hardcore punk music then don’t mug yourself by missing out on this book. From the Stooges to the Necros via Michigan luminaries Negative Approach and the Meatmen and lesser-known lights such as the Fix and Bored Youth, Rettman uses a shedload of archive images, flyers and interviews to provide a definitive account of Detroit punk. Any book with Crucifucks coverage gets our immediate seal of approval. Go buy.

revelationrecords.com

KRAUTROCK—COSMIC ROCK And ITS LEGACY

Black Dog

OK, so this has been out for a minute but it is still well worth your attention. If you are vaguely interested in krautrock and aren’t one of those regular visitors to Head Heritage that managed to snap up a copy of Julian Cope’s definitive but long-out-of-print

Krautrocksampler

(or you aren’t willing to part with a small fortune to get your hands on a copy from eBay) then Black Dog has come to your aid. Featuring beautiful full-bleed double-page photos, a comprehensive discography, a chapter on the genre’s major record labels and even a handy timeline that allows you to work out what order all those Popul Vuh records appeared in, this is effectively the go-to guide for all things kosmische.

blackdogonline.com