You must be taking the ****! Contaminated bunch of bananas is a £15,000 work of art

Published on Tuesday 21 April 2009 22:08

FOR those who claim contemporary art is one gigantic hoax – perhaps this is the perfect example.

Six bananas sitting on a window sill at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The result: The most talked about feature of a new international exhibition. Their value: an estimated 15,000.

Bananas, urine (injected) by the German artist Andreas Slominski, has taken its place alongside delicate glass sculptures, abstract paintings and prints, in an exhibition of the "best of the best" of new international art.

Slominski specialises in absurdist riddles, say experts, and would delight in the bafflement his work is causing visitors to the Edinburgh gallery.

The artist – and gallery staff – have left it tantalisingly unclear how or what the bananas are injected with, if anything. They are "replenished" every few days.

"We are saying this is art," said the director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Simon Groom. "Slominski is a very established artist. A lot of his work is slightly slapstick.

"They are being replaced as often as is needed."

The top-floor show at the gallery, Two Horizons, shows work owned by two young European collectors, Charles Asprey and Alexander Schrder. The exhibition embraces the new trend for having no labels on the walls, relying instead on a floor plan guide – a move that only adds to the confusion over the bananas.

One visitor to the exhibition yesterday described how his young son picked up the bunch and asked to eat one – before security guards quickly stepped in.

Mr Schrder, who owns the Slominski, is a well-known German art collector, while Mr Asprey, the jewellery family scion and former art dealer, is quietly becoming an important presence on the Edinburgh art scene.

Two Horizons includes work by the Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie, the Turner Prize winner Gillian Carnegie and Isa Genzken, the leading German artist and a darling of the London contemporary scene.

One work, Derailed 1, by Tom Burr, shows a white wooden banister with mysteriously missing struts.

But in a talk at the gallery , Mr Asprey found himself fielding questions on the bananas. "It's about not taking art too seriously," he said.

With the ripening bananas having to be replaced every few days (a bunch of six costs 72p at Tesco), the value of Slominski's work lies in the artist's certificate, Mr Asprey explained.

"Some people have a problem with that, but if you were to put that into an auction, it could make 15,000," he said. "Value is a strange thing. It's only got a value if someone else wants it. They are filled with urine. Or maybe they are not filled with urine," he said. "It's ambiguity."

Slominski, born in 1959, became famous for the sawn-off stump he planted among the trees of Berlin's famous Unter den Linden, provoking a police investigation. In 2005 the Serpentine Gallery staged a retrospective of his work.

DUNG DEAL

TURNER Prize-winning artist Chris Ofili was celebrated for his paintings using elephant dung.

British artist Anya Gallaccio arranged the leaves and petals of 10,000 red roses on a gallery floor and left them to shrivel.

Radical Chinese artist Gu Dexin arranged pigs' brains in a courtyard and left them to rot.

Damien Hirst's art has included preserved cows, sheep, shark and fish.