A NZ$10,000 sculpture consisting of a single slice of cucumber plucked from a McDonald’s cheeseburger thrown onto the roof of an Auckland art gallery is a deliberately “provocative gesture” designed to question what value is. says, the artist’s image says.
The work, titled Pickle, is by Australian artist Matthew Griffin, and is one of four new works in Fine Art, the Sydney to Auckland exhibition hosted by the Michael Lett Gallery.
Some fans are happy with the work, calling it “brilliant” and “ingenious”; others call it “moronic”.
“Part of the rich culture of late night,” said one post on social media.
Another pointed out the difference between the way the gesture is handled in the gallery and in the restaurant: “The police kicked me out of McDonald’s when I did this when I was young, now it’s art.”
Writing for ArtForum, Wes Hill said: “Griffin developed a unique reputation for what we in Australia call ‘taking the temper’ – a sardonic understatement of self-danger and self-destruction.”
The piece brings to mind the famous Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan titled the comic – a tube of ripening bananas that was displayed on the wall during Art Basel in Miami, in 2019, which was sold for US$120,000. He was later pulled from the wall and eaten by New York performance artist David Datuna.
Eliciting different responses to the work is part of the joy of the job, says Ryan Moore, director of Fine Arts, Sydney, which represents Griffin.
“A funny answer at work is not right – it’s OK, because it’s funny,” said Moore.
Griffin’s work appeals to Moore because as well as using animation as a tool, it follows the traditions of modern art and questions “how value and meaning exist between people”.
The inevitable question of whether Pickle is “art” doesn’t bother Moore.
“In general, artists are not the ones who decide what art is not – they are the ones who make it and make it. If anything valuable and meaningful is art it is the way we collectively, as a society, choose to use it or not.” talk,” Moore said.
“Often this looks like a cucumber attached to the ceiling – and there is no art, that’s what it is – there is something in the assembly that is an art or a gesture of art.”
Cucumbers are stuck to the ceiling with sticky sauce and show no signs of rotting, nor are they going away – “If you go to McDonald’s around the world, you’ll see things stuck to the ceiling”.
The director of the Michael Lett Gallery, Andrew Thomas, said that Pickle was an important part of the exhibition, allowing those encountering Griffin’s work for the first time to “think more deeply about the different ideas that they encapsulate”.
“There were lots of smiles, closely followed by some interesting and engaging conversations,” Thomas said.
The job is worth NZD $10,000, and will cost the buyer another NZD $4.44 per cheeseburger. The institution, or the collector who owns it, will be given instructions on how to recreate the art in their space.
“It’s not about the quality of the artist standing there in the gallery throwing it on the roof – how they get there doesn’t matter, as long as someone takes the burger out and puts it on the roof,” says Moore. .
“The feeling is very clean, very happy… that’s what makes it so good.”
