Ben Butcher promotes himself as "Australia's worst artist", so it must be gratifying to see his work on the wall of one of Australia's biggest cultural institutions: even if he had to put it there himself.

Hence the title of the framed acrylic on canvas painting – Self-Fulfilment – that he sneaked into the National Gallery of Victoria and hung on the wall.

A screen grab of Ben Butcher hanging his work on a wall at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Butcher, a former recipient of the now-defunct Itchiball Prize for Bad Art, evaded gallery security on Thursday at NGV International on St Kilda Road, placing his 2013 work on the wall with a label beside it (made in the same style as the gallery's own labels) to explain its meaning.

"We live in an age where monolithic cultural institutions no longer have a monopoly over the distribution of ideas," the label he affixed next to his work reads.