If this sounds absurd, that’s because it is, deliberately so. Shrigley is well known for drawing humour out of the everyday: naïve doodles paired with blunt text, philosophical observations disguised as jokes, and deadpan critiques of human behaviour. With Exhibition of Old Rope, he translates that sensibility into physical sculpture. The entire premise leans cheekily on the British idiom “money for old rope” - meaning to be paid generously for something worthless. In this case, Shrigley has taken the phrase literally and pushed it to a theatrical extreme: he has turned actual old rope into a million-pound artwork.
David Shrigley, My Artwork, Frieze London, 2018 © David Shrigley 2025
David Shrigley, Large Fancy Room Filled with Crap, 2018 © David Shrigley 2025
For many observers, this price tag is what transforms the piece from a playful installation into a cultural flashpoint. After all, the art world has embraced absurd valuations before, from Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana selling for six figures, to Lucio Fontana’s elegantly slashed canvases commanding millions, to invisible sculptures, balloon dogs, and conceptual certificates that seem to defy all conventional ideas of value. Yet something about Shrigley’s rope strikes a particularly raw nerve.
Perhaps it’s the fundamental honesty of the materials. A banana taped to a wall is at least a visual joke; a Fontana cut is at least a gesture; but rope - heavy, dirty, industrial rope - lacks even the pretence of “art.” It looks like something lifted straight out of a shipyard skip. For critics, this is proof that the art market has spiralled into self-parody. For fans, it is precisely the point.
David Shrigley, We must act on climate change, New Statesman, 2022 © David Shrigley 2025
In pricing the work at £1 million, Shrigley exposes the stagecraft of value itself. The absurdity is not that the rope costs a million pounds but that anything does; that the art market has long functioned as a theatre of speculation where meaning and monetary worth are woven together by narrative, reputation, scarcity, and hype. Shrigley isn’t mocking the buyer; he’s mocking the system.
In someways, public outrage reveals more about society than about Shrigley. The reaction is not just about art, it’s about inequality, about the optics of waste and wealth, and about the absurdity of luxury in a moment when many people feel economically squeezed. The idea of someone paying seven figures for old rope hits a cultural nerve because it feels like an emblem of a system gone off the rails.
David Shrigley, Balance The Ball On Your Nose, 2022 © David Shrigley 2025
Maybe that discomfort is the artwork. Shrigley has long specialised in using humour to illuminate the oddness of modern life, and Exhibition of Old Rope is no different. By creating a sculpture that is both ridiculous and serious, valueless and valuable, he forces viewers to confront the machinery of judgment, taste, and money.
In the end, the piece works because it isn’t just rope. It’s a provocation, a joke, a commentary, a trap, and a mirror. As long as we are talking about it, arguing, mocking, defending and sharing, Shrigley has already been paid, metaphorically, for his old rope. The rest is just the price tag.
David Shrigley's Exhibition of Old Rope is on view at Stephen Friedman in London until 20th December 2025
