A Load of Old Rope with David Shrigley
Considering our latest issue, Routes, it feels especially apt that rope should feature in Selvedge stories this week. At Stephen Friedman Gallery, David Shrigley’s Exhibition of Old Rope draws together material histories of labour, trade and value, transforming the gallery into a dense, coiled landscape of reclaimed maritime rope.
David Shrigley, Exhibition of Old Rope, 2025.
Marking Shrigley’s ninth solo exhibition with the gallery, the show centres on a monumental ten-ton installation made entirely from discarded rope, alongside a large-scale, four-part neon work. Over months, Shrigley travelled across the UK in search of unwanted lengths destined for landfill. Much of the rope once lived working lives at sea: cruise ship mooring lines, marker buoys, crab and lobster pots. Other sections were salvaged from climbing schools, offshore wind farms, scaffolders and tree surgeons. Shorter lengths were gathered directly from shorelines, then carefully treated and cleaned—an essential process, particularly for rope reclaimed from the sea.
David Shrigley, Exhibition of Old Rope, 2025.
The installation’s conceptual starting point lies in language. The phrase “a load of old rope”—meaning something worthless, or an easy profit, as in “money for old rope”—has murky but telling origins. Often traced to Victorian Britain, it refers to the tedious labour of prisoners or workhouse inmates who were set to unravel old rope into fibres for oakum, used to caulk ships. The work was monotonous, but the material could be sold on; discarded rope, quite literally, became money. Other accounts suggest sailors selling short, surplus lengths of rope for quick cash. In all its variations, the phrase points to the same idea: value wrung from what is worn out, unwanted or deemed useless.
David Shrigley, Exhibition of Old Rope, 2025.
That history resonates powerfully here. Vast coiled mounds reveal a surprising richness of colour, texture and condition, from almost new to frayed, sun-bleached and weather-beaten, while quietly evoking Britain’s long rope-making traditions—from hemp and jute lines of the Royal Navy to today’s synthetic ropes, now notoriously difficult to recycle and a pressing environmental concern.
David Shrigley, Exhibition of Old Rope, Stephen Friedman Gallery, 2025
Shrigley approaches this material weight with caustic humour. A blazing orange neon bearing the exhibition title hangs in the window, rendered in his unmistakable hand, parodying the language of advertising while poking at the mechanics of value and commerce within the gallery itself. Declaring old rope as art—and pricing it accordingly—he exposes the slippery thresholds between labour, material and worth.
For Selvedge readers of Issue 128, Routes, the connections are immediate. In SAILORS’ DELIGHT: Nautical Woolwork, we explore how long hours at sea fostered intimate acts of making, while WINDS OF GLOBAL TRADE traces wool’s shifting routes through history. Shrigley’s Exhibition of Old Rope belongs firmly within this lineage: a meditation on endurance, exchange and the long, tangled routes by which materials—and meanings—are made.
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Further Information:
David Shrigley: Exhibition of Old Rope is on at the Stephen Friedman Gallery, 5–6 Cork Street, London W1S 3LQ until 20 December 2025.
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Image Credits:
Lead:
All further images as credited in photo captions.