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David Shrigley Unveils £1 Million ‘Exhibition of Old Rope’ in London

The Turner Prize nominee uses discarded maritime rope to test ideas of price, authorship, reuse.

Overview

  • The exhibition opened on 13 November 2025 at Stephen Friedman Gallery and is scheduled to run through 20 December.
  • The installation comprises about 10 tonnes—roughly 20 miles—of rope cleaned in Shrigley’s studio and arranged in four large piles across the gallery.
  • Material was gathered over months from ports, cruise‑ship moorings, fishing gear, climbing schools, tree surgeons, scaffolders, window‑cleaning firms, offshore wind farms, and UK shorelines.
  • Shrigley describes the £1 million price as a deliberate provocation, and the gallery says it will try to place the work with a private or institutional buyer.
  • Much of the rope is synthetic and hard to recycle, underscoring marine waste concerns that see hundreds of thousands of tonnes of nets and lines enter oceans each year.