David Shrigley turns 6000 copies of ‘The Da Vinci Code’ into George Orwell’s ‘1984’
Known for his off-the-cuff, humorous artworks, artist David Shrigley has now turned his focus to literature and pulped 6,000 copies of The Da Vinci Code which he’s republished as George Orwell’s 1984.
The Dan Brown novel The Da Vinci Code has sold over 80 million copies worldwide, and Shrigley discovered the book is so popular that an Oxfam shop in Swansea had stopped accepting copies – leading the artist to hatch a plan.
The manager of that particular store spoke to the BBC about the “one particular donation that [they] were getting a little more than [they] could use, which was The Da Vinci Code.“
The store decided to make a joke out of the matter, piling all their copies of the novel up next to a sign that read, “Yeah you could give us another Da Vinci Code, but we would rather have your vinyl.” Shrigley saw this image, prompting him with the idea for the project, recalling, “‘I want those. I don’t know why, but I want them.’ So, I set about acquiring as many Da Vinci Codes as I could.”
At first, Shrigley trawled charity shops, but they often only gave him one or two copies at once. Therefore, the artist turned his efforts to recycling plants, which he claims had “almost an unlimited number.” Wrap Distribution in Oxfordshire alone had 100,000 square feet of unwanted copies of Brown’s novel.
But why 1984? Talking to the BBC about the project, Shrigley revealed he had “re-read 1984 again recently and realised that George Orwell had died in 1950, so it was coming up for 70 years [in 2020} since his death. Which means that all his works are in the public domain, so it means that anyone can publish one of George Orwell’s books.”
For Shrigley, this is “not literary criticism.” He wasn’t aiming to make any grand statement with the project, despite the deeply political themes in Orwell’s 1984. However, 70 years on from its release, Shrigley does consider 1984 a “really important book for people to read.”
1,200 copies of Shrigley’s republished editions of 1984 will go on sale in the same Oxfam in Swansea that first hatched the plan. Each novel is uniquely numbered and signed with a retail price of £495.
