British artist David Shrigley has opened a solo exhibition at Stephen Friedman Gallery in London titled “David Shrigley: Exhibition of Old Rope,” featuring a 1.3-meter-high pile of ten tons of discarded rope as a conceptual installation. The work, priced at £1 million ($1.3 million), was assembled from rope salvaged from maritime, climbing, and industrial sources that would otherwise have gone to landfill. Shrigley describes the piece as a literal exploration of the idiom “money for old rope,” questioning the value people place on art.
The exhibition matters because it continues a long tradition of readymade art, from Marcel Duchamp to Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana, which sold for $6.2 million last year. However, the timing is awkward: Stephen Friedman Gallery recently reported significant financial losses, and the work’s high price tag tests the market’s appetite for conceptual art. The show also arrives as another Cattelan piece—a golden toilet—hits the auction block in New York, underscoring ongoing debates about art’s monetary and cultural value.