Student leaves pineapple at art exhibition, returns to find it encased in glass

Contemporary art can be baffling. When does an everyday object become a work of art? A university student recently discovered an ordinary pineapple can be transformed into a gallery piece simply by placing it within an exhibit, after he did just that.

Ruairi Gray is a fourth year student at Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, Scotland. In late April, Gray and his friend, Lloyd Jack, bought a pineapple at the supermarket. As a joke, they left the piece of fruit in a campus art exhibition occurring as part of the visual art and design festival “Look Again.”

‘I saw an empty art display stand and decided to see how long it would stay there for or if people would believe it was art,” Gray told MailOnline.

The friends returned four days later to discover that the pineapple had been placed under a rectangular glass case. Surprised and pleased at his pineapple’s upgrade from yummy fruit to work of art, Gray photographed the encased fruit and posted it to Facebook.

Organisers of the show claim they don’t know who placed the case over the pineapple, but Press and Journal reports that they’ve decided to keep it in the show.

“It’s still there now,” said Natalie Kerr, an assistant for the festival who organised the display. “We decided to keep it because it’s keeping with the playful spirit of this commission.”

What does Gray think of his new status as a contemporary artist?

“I saw the opportunity to be an artist and took it,” Gray told the RGU Union. “This was the perfect way to end my time at university.”