Shrigley to stage UK solo show alongside Dutch old masters
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- David Shrigley will stage a solo exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery from 25 May to 5 September 2027, his first in a UK public art museum since his 2012 Hayward Gallery retrospective, the gallery said.
- The exhibition will pair Shrigley's new commissions with original works by Jan Steen, Adriaen Brouwer, David Teniers the Younger, Adriaen van Ostade, Pieter Brueghel the Younger and Rembrandt van Rijn, hung together to show works "created almost 400 years apart."
- The show will explore "the comedic side of historic painting" and how artists through the ages have used humour to observe everyday life, human behaviour and social interaction, alongside key loans from major UK institutions.
- Helen Hillyard, head of collection and exhibitions at Dulwich, said Shrigley — "like our historic painters — has an instinct for finding the funny side of everyday life" and is "the perfect artist to bring back playfulness to the old masters."
- Shrigley, a Turner Prize nominee famed for line drawings and playful subject matter, recently installed the 2021 Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange and 2025's "Exhibition of Old Rope" at Stephen Friedman Gallery, which featured 10 tons of discarded rope with a £1m price tag.
- Dulwich Picture Gallery's wider 2027/28 programme also includes what is understood to be the first UK museum exhibition of French artist Jacqueline Marval (2 February to 9 May 2027) with more than 40 paintings, and a major Anwar Jalal Shemza retrospective showing over 80 works from 21 September to 16 January 2027.
Why it matters: It is Shrigley's first UK public-museum solo show in 15 years, and the curatorial framing — contemporary humour hung directly beside Rembrandt and Brueghel — stakes a claim that comedy is a serious tool for observing life, not a sideshow to it. The Dulwich programme also gives Jacqueline Marval and Anwar Jalal Shemza their first UK museum showings in decades, putting two under-recognised modernists in front of new audiences.
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