An “Artist” In London Is Selling Jars Of Urine (AKA “Art”) For $500 A Piece And Locals Are Pissed

MyLondon - Londoners have been left completely baffled as 'cans of urine' are being sold for £500 outside the Tate Modern. British artist, Gavin Turk, is behind the canned urine. He began selling aluminium cans of his own urine in 2021 for £333, the cost of the equivalent weight in silver.

(A+ headline if I don’t say so myself)

Am I crazy or does it seem like we hear one of these stories every couple years? Some "eccentric" and out of the box thinking "artist" gets the inspiration to can or jar their own shit or piss or period blood and sell it as "art". This reminds me of that artist that was selling "air", I mean, excuse me, an invisible sculpture for $18,000.

I like art, or so I think I do- I love visiting museums when I travel, old cathedrals and duomos in Europe and taking in the sculptures and paintings. But I guess I'm just not cultured enough to understand or appreciate real art- aka somebody's excrement or piss in a can.

But one Reddit user suggested that the 'cans of urine' might be a worthwhile investment. They said: "I know it seems like nonsense (and it is!), but if you go and buy a can you will almost definitely make money on this if you auction it in a year or two."

The artist reportedly spent two years collecting his urine, and designed an aluminium can that reads "artist's p***" in 31 different languages. It's sealed with a foil cover, and has the artist's hand-written signature at the top. According to artdaily.com, the cans are limited edition, with only 1,000 330ml cans available to buy.

Oh they're limited edition? Why didn't the article state that earlier? In that case, $500 seems like a bargain here, no?

I'm not even mad at these people. There's a sucker born every minute and if you can convince idiots to literally hand over money for something they flush down the toilet daily, more power to you.

If we're being honest here in the circle of trust I'm mostly mad at myself. Like Timmy in The Sandlot when the vacuum backfires and explodes.

I could have been cashing in on this s̶c̶a̶m̶ artistic revolution for years now. I basically invented it.

Back in my hey day as a dj and degenerate drinker, I would play such long sets I’d be dying to run to the bathroom. I’d usually flip or mix songs every minute to minute and thirty so when I absolutely couldn’t take it anymore I’d put on a longer song and race to the bathroom. One famous time at Toads in Providence, The Nose caught me-

In a rare occurrence with Dave, this became the biggest deal in the world.

The responsible, mature, and intelligent man would reflect, and cut back on the drinking to problem solve the issue. Being none of those, I decided I’d stash an empty Gatorade bottle under the booth before the shows would start and use that. Real scumbag behavior.

Again, we’re in the trust tree here.

Problem solved. Or so I thought. Never had an issue again at our big Blackout shows.

But it carried over to my shows in Chicago when I wasn’t on the road. And one night I left one spot, a very hot spot at the time ran by an extremely professional hospitality group in the city, rhymes with Helman’s, to race to a second gig at another late night spot and I left the bottle in the booth. A GM found it (disgusting I know), told his owners, and the axe dropped on my head like I was Ned Stark.

I know we’re getting way off topic here but I was really ashamed about this for a while. I blew a big opportunity with a group that was on a rocket ship to the moon and had really loved me up until that point. After some time I began to learn that big time DJs like Diplo and bands that’d been touring for decades did this same thing all the time. So although still pretty disgusting and embarrassing, at least I wasn’t some lone deviant sicko.

Realizing now, that all I needed to do was tell people I was “creating art”, and asking them for $500 dollars for it, not only would have got me off the hook, but made me rich and probably gone viral, really chaps my ass.

Gavin explained to Widewalls magazine his thought process behind the cans of urine: "I was provoked to do it now, as it’s 60 years since Manzoni canned his own s***," speaking of Italian artist Piero Manzoni who canned his own faeces in 1961, and sold it for the price of the equivalent weight in gold.

There you go guys. I know not everybody can get over to London before these limited edition cans sell out so take solace in the fact you can just hit up his website and order online. While supplies last.

p.s. - this is a goldmine side job for all those amazon drivers who’ve been pissing in bottles on the job for years now. Start a counterfeit or bootleg ring like they do in Asia with all the knockoff luxury designer shit they sell on canal st.

Unless somebody’s a piss tester nobody will know the difference. Just get some nice jars, call them this guys piss and voila.