Fine Arts, Sydney’s caption on Pickle’s Instagram post discourages those who think it’s just a hoax.
What do we perceive as a work of art? Four years ago, at Art Basel Miami Beach 2019, Maurizio Cattelan taped a banana to a wall and sold it for $120,000 (before anyone ate it). Now, something similar happened in Auckland, New Zealand: Australian artist Matthew Griffin ordered a McDonald’s hamburger, entered the Michael Lett Gallery, he took a pickle out of his burger and threw it at the ceiling as an exhibit. The gallery informed that the public artwork it costs $10,000 of New Zealand (about US$6,300).
The gallery representing the artist – Fine Arts, Sydney – describes the trick as a “sculpture”, which was on display at the New Zealand art gallery until July 30. It is branded ‘Pickle’ and forms part of an exhibition of works by artists represented by Fine Arts, Sydney at the invitation of Michael Lett. The exhibition presented for the first time new works by four artists that touch on the themes of transience, distance and time; throwing a pickle at the ceiling is an example of ‘distance’.
Fine Arts, Sydney’s caption on ‘Pickle”s Instagram post dissuades those who think it’s just a hoax; they also revealed its ingredients Mcdonald hamburger. Reactions were mixed although one commented “I got kicked out of a McDonald’s by the police for doing this when I was a teenager. Now, it’s art.”
However, speaking to the British newspaper The Guardian, the director of Fine Arts, Sydney, Ryan Moore, emphasized that he does not think twice about characterizing Griffin’s work as art, stating that in general the role of artists is to create and do things, not to decide whether something is art or not.
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