Chuck anything into the rarefied light of a white-walled gallery and that “thing” becomes art. This is not a new idea. More than a century on from Marcel Duchamp’s (1917), it’s a necessary conceit for anyone entering a space that shows contemporary art. Arguably what has changed over the past 30-odd years is the willingness of collectors to pay gut-curdling sums of money for said objects.
And so enter David Shrigley’s , a work that—as described—arranges 10-tons of salvaged rope on the immaculately polished floors of Stephen Friedman Gallery in London. The price? £1 million ($1.3 million).
Over the past year, Shrigley (and presumably a few assistants) have scoured the shoreline and rummaged through rubbish in search of lost, unloved, and generally moribund lengths of old rope. As the aforementioned tonnage suggests, they found quite a lot. There is thick-as-your-arm rope used to moor cruise ships, as well as skinnier cousins that once fixed buoys and lobster pots. There’s old cord taken from climbing schools, tree surgeons, offshore wind farms, and window cleaning companies. Basically, if it was old and no longer properly functional, it was treated, cleaned, and assembled into a rather expensive pile.
Shrigley spent months looking for unwanted lengths of rope. Photo: Lucy North/PA Images via Getty Images.
As the gallery helpfully explains, the U.K. has a storied tradition of rope-making, from the hemp and jute varieties used by fishermen and the Royal Navy, to their synthetic modern analogs. Rope is also difficult to recycle and poses a “major environmental issue.” Is the pile some commentary on Britain’s disappearing manufacturing sector, a wink at its long-lost Imperial power, or else some blunt visual symbolizing the ecological cost of capitalism? Sure, if you want it to be. But it’s first and foremost a joke that plays off the English idiom “money for old rope.” In short, Shrigley is sticking his toe in the murky waters of the art market and testing its temperature.
“The work exists because I’m interested in the value people place on art, and the idiom gave me an excuse to explore that,” Shrigley said in a statement. “I think £1 million is a fair price, partly because of the idea and partly because it is quite a lot of rope.”
The adage dates to early 19th-century Britain in which a ship’s old rope had a ready resale value and was an easy way for someone to make a small amount of money. This playful reimagining is typical of an artist who has made his name by pairing bright, simple images with wry captions written in a child-like hand—one he deploys in the neon sign that advertises the show from the gallery’s streetside window.
“ disrupts the conventions of a commercial gallery,” reads the statement issued by Stephen Friedman. This is not really true. The convention of a gallery is to sell art and this work—put forward by a commercially successful artist who is duly receiving media attention commensurate with that success—will, in all likelihood, sell. Punny and a little bit irreverent, yes, but far from original.
Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com
