‘Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange’ @ Stephen Friedman Gallery
If anyone can make a match out of twelve thousand, one hundred and sixty-six tennis balls and an art gallery in Mayfair, it’s the British visual artist David Shrigley.
David Shrigley, Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange, 2021. Wooden shelves, tennis balls, neon and badges. Dimensions variable. Source: Stephen Friedman Gallery.
Shrigley’s latest solo show and his eighth at London’s Stephen Friedman Gallery, Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange serves up a fascinating exploration of value, commerce, and trade. Inspired by the exchange that takes place when he throws a tennis ball to his pup Inca, many of which end up discarded, Shrigley explains, “I throw them and she chases them. [Her interest is] more about exchange than possession.”
Installation view of Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange. Photo by Rhiannon Roberts.
Surrounded by a smattering of chic storefronts, a glowing green neon sign spells out the exhibition’s title, a cheeky nod to the irony of its location. Visitors are encouraged to fetch their own tennis ball and bring it in to exchange for a new one. With each swap of a ball, they are rewarded with a pin badge as they themselves swap from viewer to editor. With each new ball comes a new anecdote – some shown no mercy and shredded by canine teeth, some scrawled on in marker with phrases like “Love Your Mother,” “Give Me Purpose,” and a personal favourite, “I Don’t Even Play Tennis.” One even sports a pair of googly eyes and its own COVID-19 face mask. The result is a continual and ever-changing work-in-progress that lives on beyond the confines of the gallery walls through constant community curation.
Installation view of Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange. Photo by Rhiannon Roberts.
Known for working with a wide range of materials throughout his career, perhaps most notably for his humorous drawings on paper, this is a departure for Shrigley and is his first exhibition that was fabricated by a team of collaborators. “I’m not a straight lines kind of guy, and there are a lot of straight lines in this installation,” he notes. With several kilometres of shelving lining every wall of Gallery 1 with a vivid wash of electric neon, the exhibition almost crosses the net into Op art. Unintentional Shrigley notes, but also a happy, Instagram-worthy accident. It’s user-friendly and jampacked full of meaning, but it’s also just so damn fun to look at. Stare at it for long enough and you’ll start seeing rackets. With simplicity all too often quoted as the ultimate form of sophistication, Shrigley has made something make sense here in the heart of Mayfair that simply shouldn’t.
Installation shot Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange. Photo by Rhiannon Roberts.
Shrigley’s work often aims to capture everyday situations and interactions through child-like eyes with a satirical sprinkle of humour for good measure, and this fresh conceptual feat is no fault. A visual punch to the gut, its absurdity is part of its charm. By eliminating the standard no-touch rule usually attached to viewing art, the work’s interactive element connects it to the viewer that completes it. It’s cyclical. The same way our interactions can shape and sometimes shred us, the exchange of these spherical everyday objects mirror how fragments of our selves are worn down and replaced with something new over time.
David Shrigley, Clock, 2020. LED screens, electronics and steel. 51.5 x 151.5 x 21.9cm. Source: Stephen Friedman Gallery.
Across the street in Gallery 2, Shrigley’s interest in the everyday and decay continues in the form of a single digital clock mounted on the back wall, large and looming and aptly titled Clock. It’s set to local London time, yet its Scorsese red LEDs are deliberately blurred and out of focus. It’s just illegible enough for you to strain your eyes at like you would your local train station’s departure board – the very notion that inspired its creation as the artist’s own eyesight continues to weaken. Although it marks yet another stylistic departure, the work still feels oh-so-Shrigley, toying with skewed proportions of a found object à la Lewis Carroll. By separating the clock’s rightful place within social convention from individual experience, Shrigley renders it useless and murders the time - like Mayfair’s very own Mad Hatter.
Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange is on view until 8 January 2022 at Stephen Friedman Gallery in London. It is also available to view via their website.
Rhiannon Roberts
Editor In Chief, MADE IN BED