Students claim they managed to pass off a pineapple they bought for £1 at a supermarket as a work of art, after leaving it in the middle of an exhibition at their university,

Ruairi Gray, a business information technology student at Robert Gordon University in Scotland, and his friend Lloyd Jack, reportedly left the fruit at the Look Again exhibition at RGU's Sir Ian Wood building, hoping that it might be mistaken for art.

When they returned four days later he found that the pineapple had been put inside its own glass display case at the event.

Gray, 22, told the MailOnline: "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.

The students claim they returned to the exhibition to find that the pineapple had been covered by a glass case (Lloyd Jack/Twitter)

"I came in later and it had been put in a glass case - it's the funniest thing that has happened all year. My honours supervisor saw it and asked an art lecturer if it was real because he could not believe it."

Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting Show all 8 1 /8 Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting Olya, oil on paper, 42 x 60 inches, 2017 Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting Kaori, oil on paper, 42 x 60 inches, 2017 Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting Priscilla, oil on paper, 42 x 60 inches, 2017 Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting Yigal Ozeri's Contemporary Hyperrealistic Painting

Natalie Kerr, a cultural assistant for the festival who organised the display, said she wasn't the one who included the fruit as an artwork because she is allergic to pineapple.

"We were moving the exhibition, and came back after 10 minutes and it was in this glass case," she told the Press & Journal.

"It's a bit of a mystery - the glass is pretty heavy and would need two or three people to move it, we have no idea who did it. But it's still there now, we decided to keep it because it's keeping with the playful spirit of this commission."

The incident recalls a similar prank last year when a 17-year-old placed a pair of glasses on the floor at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Apparently unimpressed with some of the work on display and wanting to test the theory that people will try to interpret any object provided it is in a gallery setting, TJ Khayatan placed the glasses on the floor and walked away.

Soon after, visitors to the gallery surrounded them and began taking pictures.

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Khayatan, who had previous success with a baseball cap and a bin, was keen to defend modern art despite the joke.

"I can agree that modern art can be a joke sometimes, but art is a way to express our creativity," he said at the time.