The creation of the “pickle” (photo by michaellettgallery, instagram)
A New Zealand artist’s artwork consisting of a piece of pickle that was in a McDonald’s cheeseburger and thrown onto the ceiling of an Auckland art gallery is said to be a deliberately “provocative gesture” designed to question what is valuable. Believe it or not, the artist’s asking price for the piece is NZ$10,000. (about 6,200 US dollars).
The work, its name Picklebelongs to Sydney-based Australian artist Matthew Griffin, and is one of four new works inFine Arts, Sydney’s exhibition in Auckland hosted by the Michael Lett Gallery. Some fans delight in the work, calling it “genius” and “brilliant”; Others of course thought it was “dumb”.
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“I got thrown out of McDonald’s by the police when I was a teenager, because I threw a piece like that on the ceiling, now it’s art.” was written in one of the posts on social networks.
The piece is reminiscent of the infamous artwork by the Italian artist Maurizio Catalan called Comedian – A ripening banana taped to the gallery wall during Art Basel in Miami, in 2019, which sold for $120,000. She was then taken off the wall and eaten by New York artist David Datona.
The creation of the “pickle” (photo by michaellettgallery, instagram)
Creating different reactions to the work is part of the experience of the art, said Ryan Moore, director of arts in Sydney, to the British ‘Guardian’. “A humorous response to work isn’t wrong — it’s okay, because it’s funny,” Moore said. Griffin’s work appeals to Moore because, as well as using humor as a device, it follows the traditions of contemporary art and poses questions about “the way value and meaning are created among people”.
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“In general, artists are not the ones who decide whether something is art or not – they are the ones who create and do things. Whether something is valuable and meaningful as a work of art is how we collectively, as a society choose to use it or talk about it,” Moore said. “As much as it looks like a pickle stuck to the ceiling – and there’s no art there, that’s exactly what it is – there’s something about meeting it as a sculpture or as a sculptural gesture.”
The pickle is stuck to the ceiling and shows no sign of decay, and it doesn’t peel either – “If you go to McDonald’s all over the world, you’ll see things stuck to the ceiling.”
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Michael Lett Gallery co-director Andrew Thomas said Pickle was an important addition to the exhibition, allowing those encountering Griffin’s work for the first time to “think broadly about the different ideas it contains.” “There were a lot of smiles, followed by some interesting and engaging conversations,” Thomas said.
The work carries a price tag of NZ$10,000, and will cost the buyer an additional NZ$4.44 if they want it inside a cheeseburger. The institution or collector who purchases the work will receive instructions on how to reproduce the art in their own space.
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“It’s not about the virtuosity of the artist standing there in the gallery and throwing it to the ceiling – how it gets there doesn’t matter, as long as someone takes it out of the hamburger and moves it to the ceiling,” Moore said. “The gesture is so pure, so joyful… that’s what makes it so good.”
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