Jeremy Deller & David Shrigley at the Hayward Gallery

Until Sunday 13 May 

Southbank Centre
Belvedere Road
London SE1 8XX

David Shrigley, Leisure Centre, 1992

Building up towards the Olympics, London’s galleries and museums are slowly turning the city into a vitrine for iconic British art and creation. From YBA’s Damien Hirst at Tate Modern, Cecil Beaton’s portraits of the Queen at the V&A to the government’s art collection at the Whitechapel Gallery, London’s cultural scene is renovating a sense of ‘Cool Britannia’ ahead of the international spotlight about to be shone on the capital.

The Hayward Gallery is currently putting forward two emblematic British artists: Jeremy Deller and David Shrigley. Both are internationally acclaimed practitioners, even though they operate at relatively different ends of the contemporary art spectrum. While Jeremy Deller is a self-described ‘self-taught conceptual artist’, known for his engaging and community orientated work and referencing different moments of England’s protest history, David Shrigley is the infamously dark and quirky cartoonist (amongst other of his many practices). Both exhibitions co-exist quite peacefully in the Brutalist building of the Hayward gallery and offer an opportunity to discover a cohesive display of their work.

Jeremy Deller’s Joy in People and David Shrigley’s Brain Activity have a few weeks left to go, for those who are actively (or not) exploring the current pre-Olympics London art circuit. The Hayward Gallery will then be turned into a month-long ‘open school’, with international artists developing a wide range of discursive activities into the space and, possibly, offering an alternative to the 2012 ‘Cool Britannia’.