Art or just a pineapple? (Picture: Facebook/Ruairi Gray)

A student from Aberdeen has done Tracey Emin and the like no favours by leaving a pineapple at an art exhibition as a prank before later discovering it had been mistaken for art.

Ruairi Gray, 22, had bought the pineapple as a ‘joke’ but discovered the next day that it had been put on show in a glass display case in the centre of the exhibition at Robert Gordon University.

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The prank worked so flawlessly that the piece of fruit was apparently on display for six days before it was taken down with the rest of the exhibition.

Ruairi, who is originally from Edinburgh, told metro.co.uk that he had bought the pineapple to tease a friend but was stuck with it after the joke fell on deaf ears.




‘We were stuck with this pineapple, we didn’t know what to do with it, until we saw this empty art display. Our goal was to see how long it would remain there before being removed,’ he said.

The fruit was on display for two days (Picture: Facebook/Ruairi Gray)

After placing the pineapple on the empty display stand on a Thursday, the fourth year business and information technology student returned four days later to find it had been put in a glass display box.

‘We were shocked and in disbelief. We didn’t stop laughing for about 10 minutes,’ he continued.

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‘It lasted there until Wednesday evening, until the rest of the display was taken away and it was the last thing left.’

He explained his tutor had been at the exhibition and asked an art lecturer whether the piece was real.

Ruairi said the lecturer replied: ‘Of course it’s real, you can see what they were trying to do with the top of the pineapple and the glass.’

Curators eventually realised their mistake (Picture: Facebook/Ruairi Gray)

The art exhibition called Look Again challenged visitors to ‘look at the places and spaces around us through fresh eyes’.

Sally Reaper, Look Again Festival Director said: ‘It’s a bit of a mystery – we really have got no idea who did it. It was very clear to us it was a prank but we have decided to leave it there because it’s in keeping with the playful spirit of our festival.

‘The 2017 festival has been really successful – we had more than 30,000 attendees and we’re already looking forward to next year.’

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