Total recoil: David Shrigley is literally putting some old rope on display – and it can be yours for £1m!

By Eddy Frankel · The Guardian Culture

Stephen Friedman Gallery, London Is the pranksy artist’s latest show a worrying comment about Britain’s discarded rope problem – or a joke at the expense of the buy-anything art world? How long is a piece of string? David Shrigley can’t answer that, but he can tell you how much it weighs: 10 tonnes, apparently. His latest installation is literally an exhibition of 10 tonnes of old rope, accumulated by him over months, and left in towering mounds in this swanky gallery in London’s Mayfair. Most of it is marine rope, destined for landfill. It’s hard to recycle this stuff, it seems, and there’s an endless supply of it dumped around the world. So Shrigley scooped up as much of it as he could find, piled it up and put a massive price tag on it. The work can be yours for £1m. And that’s the point of the show: this is literally money for old rope. It’s not that deep – it’s just an idea taken to its logical conclusion, an idiom taken too far, a pun taken too literally. Continue reading...