A Turner Prize-nominated artist put up a 10-ton pile of discarded rope for £1 million.
David Shrigley spent months scouring the country for unwanted material, which was treated and cleaned at his studio.
The artist, who previously created a thumb sculpture on the fourth plinth at Trafalgar Square in central London, launched a public exhibition where the rope is the only piece of work.
Shrigley started the exhibition, taking inspiration from the idiom ‘money for old rope’.
He said: ‘This exhibition started with an idiom. Old rope has no use. It’s also hard to recycle, so there’s a lot of it lying around.
‘I thought, what if I turn that into a literal exhibition of old rope? And then say, yes, this is art, and yes, you can buy it for £1 million.’
The lengths of rope vary in size, with discarded items used from cruise liner mooring lines to slim cords used for crab and lobster pots.
Measuring a total of 20 miles if laid out from end to end, the rope is heavier than the average African bush elephant.
David Shrigley spent months scouring the country for unwanted material, which was treated and cleaned at his studio
Shrigley started the exhibition, taking inspiration from the idiom ‘money for old rope’
Measuring a total of 20 miles if laid out from end to end, the rope is heavier than the average African bush elephant
Other bits of rope have been salvaged from climbing schools, tree surgeons, offshore wind farms, scaffolders and window cleaning firms.
Shrigley collected the shorter lengths himself from shorelines across the UK.
‘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.
‘I think £1 million is a fair price, partly because of the idea and partly because it is quite a lot of rope.’
Exhibition Of Old Rope will run at the Stephen Friedman Gallery in London from November 13 to December 20.
Shrigley was born in 1968 in Macclesfield, UK and lives and works in Brighton.
His sculpture Really Good was unveiled in Trafalgar Square, London, for the Fourth Plinth Commission in September 2016.
The sculpture travelled to Melbourne, Australia in 2023 to be included in the NGV Triennial, alongside his evolving installation Tennis Ball Exchange.
His Mayfair Tennis Ball Exchange opened at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, in 2021.
Visitors were invited to bring an old ball to swap with a new one from the numerous shelves that lined the walls.
Gradually, the rows of yellow spheres were replaced with misshapen and discoloured forms, celebrating the joy of trade and exchange.
In 2024, The Mantis Muse, a three-metre-tall animatronic praying mantis, was installed at his former school in Leicester in October 2024.
Intended for students to respond to in art classes, the sculpture aimed to spark a national conversation about the vital importance of the arts in education.
Another of the artist’s exhibitions, What the Hell Was I Thinking? will open at Kunsthal Rotterdam, Netherlands, in December 2025.
