Artist throws McDonald’s pickle on the ceiling and lists it for over £5000

Looking to make a quick buck? Well, one man in New Zealand has chucked a pickle from his McDonald’s burger on the ceiling of a museum, and he’s listing it for almost £6000.

Artist, Matthew Griffin shared his creation, entitled, “Pickle”, last month – and it’s literally just that.

The display is made up of a pickle he had taken out of a McDonald’s cheeseburger and thrown onto the ceiling of a gallery in New Zealand.

Wanna check it out? You might have to squint to see it: 

The pickle is reportedly only secured to the ceiling thanks to the sauces that were already in the burger.

Having recently been displayed at Michael Lett art gallery, during its “Hosting Fine Arts, Sydney,” exhibition, the Maccies themed artwork was listed for $10,000 Australian dollars, which is equivalent to around £5700.

It’s not been disclosed if the artwork was sold, but obviously giving anyone the pickle was going to be a bit of a mission, once it was time to take the exhibit down.

Instead, the artist said anyone who forked out the hefty amount of cash would be given “instructions on how to recreate the art in their own space,” and given a fresh pickle to boot.

Surely it’s pretty self explanatory, right?

On top of that, they’ll be offered the rest of the cheeseburger for NZD $4.44 (around £2.30). Yup, it’s not even included in the original price tag.

Reacting to the artwork, some people have branded it “genius”, whilst others are understandably less convinced.

“I got kicked out of a McDonald’s by the police for doing this when I was a teenager, now it’s art,” joked somebody else as they came across the display.

We have to admit, they do have a point…

Responding to those who may have laughed at the absurdity of the piece, Ryan Moore, director of Fine Arts, Sydney, said to The Guardian: “A humorous response to the work is not invalid – it’s OK, because it is funny.”

He added that since the pickle had been chucked on the sealing, it hadn’t shown any signs of peeling off, and it hadn’t decayed, either.

“If you go to McDonald’s all around the world, you’ll see things stuck on the ceiling,” he added. Is it possible this piece is even… profound?!

“Generally speaking, artists aren’t the ones deciding whether something is art is not – they are the ones who make and do things. Whether something is valuable and meaningful as artwork is the way that we collectively, as a society choose to use it or talk about it,” he went on.

The artist is listing the pickle for a hefty price (Credit: Alamy)

“As much as this looks like a pickle attached to the ceiling – and there is no artifice there, that is exactly what it is – there is something in the encounter with that as a sculpture or a sculptural gesture.”

The piece is not dissimilar to Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s artwork, called Comedian, which was just a banana duct-taped to the wall of a gallery in Art Basel, Miami, back in 2019.

Whatever you think of it, it’s definitely got people talking.

Brb, we’re off to throw a KFC bargain bucket at the wall.