CONTEMPORARY ART AUCTION
Celebrity Host - Mark Lamar
Press Launch
Monday 11th February 2002
11:00am to 14:30pm
Press Reception
18:00 to 21:00pm
Auction Date
Tuesday 12th February 2002 @ 7pm
Venue
The London Institute and Chelsea College of Art and Design, Millbank,
London SW1P 4RJ
Auctioneers
Bonhams - Pippa Stockdale,
Director of Paintings
Tickets
£15 per head
Bidding & Press passes available on request
WELFARE STATE INTERNATIONAL
INVESTING IN THE FUTURE OF ARTISTS
For more than three decades Welfare State International
has worked with many artists to create prototypes of Celebratory Arts
for specific occasions, places and communities. Recently, much of this
work has focussed generally on private and public ceremonies, and in
particular on rites of passage for birth and death.
DEAD is perhaps the most unusual of the many projects that Welfare State International has pioneered over many years.
WSI's interest in death and the rituals and ceremonies that surround it is an expression of the desire to confront this major cultural taboo and to bring the vision and sensibility of the artist to reclaim this important area of our lives from funeral ceremonies that are often sentimental and overpriced.
The Year of the Artist (YOTA) has provided the Company with a wonderful opportunity to invite another generation of artists and designers, whose work is more usually associated with the urbane and the avant-garde, to respond to the challenge of death by making a 'real' artefact for a 'real' funeral.
Interestingly, the group of radical and dynamic artists who have accepted this challenge have done so because of its emotional appeal; death is a subject that resonates in a personal and intimate way for each one of us.The work that has resulted is featured in DEAD.
The exhibition early in March had a purpose beyond its aesthetic. The artefacts will be sold to create an investment fund that will enable bursaries to be made available to individual artists to work in residence for periods of time at Lanternhouse, a purpose built centre for the celebratory arts on the edge of the Lake District in Ulverston, Cumbria.
The bursary fund will be a lasting legacy for the Year of the Artist and has been made possible through the generosity of the artists participating in DEAD who have given their work free so that the proceeds from their sale can contribute to the investment fund.
Welfare State welcomes this collaboration and celebrates the energy and commitment displayed in this collection of original and innovative work that ranges from the austere to the flamboyant, the anarchic to the classical and the outrageous to the humble. The gratitude of future recipients of the bursary is also present.
DEAD is a provocative and stimulating experienced
for artists and public alike.
Artists' History and Donated Works