Athenia Design

A Turner painting depicting the city of Rome has recently sold for £29.7 million, a record amount for eh British artist. The painting Turner’s Modern Rome has been brought by a London dealer on behalf of the J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, California. It was painted in 1839 and has been described by experts as Turner’s finest view of a Italian city. It has only been sold once before on the open market back in the last 172 years. It was previously owned by a descendant of the 5th Earl of Rosebery,who bought it in 1878 whilst on his honeymoon and before that by Scottish landowner and collector Hugh Munro of Novar who brought it directly from the artists exhibition.

A public toilet in Northumberland has been turned into an arts venue for the next five months. The arts project will highlight the country’s wildlife. The outside of the lavatory will be revamped with images of birds including an eider duck and a yellowhammer. The project has been developed by Inspire Northumberland and the Seahouses Development Trust.

Floppy disks are not really good for much these days but one artist has been putting them to good use.  Nick Gentry uses old floppy disks to create his pictures incorporating them into the artwork itself by using them as a canvas. Anything from 6 to more than 100 disks are used to create each picture depending upon the size. You can see one example to the left here but for others take a look at this article.

According to this article people are increasingly choosing inexpensive pursuits such as painting and drawing during the recession. It seems people are moving away from more expensive hobbies as paint brush sales tripled and sales of A4 sketch books doubled at Tesco last year. They have put the increase down to their customers looking for cheaper ways to spend their free time and expect a further increase this year.

At first glance this might seem like quite a good buy for £3,000, but the bungalow is actually a condemned property. The bungalow at Knipe Point near Scarborough is situated dangerously close to the edge of a cliff and is likely to fall into the sea within 6 months. Artist, Mr Cunningham has brought the property so that he can spend his time painting its descent into the sea. He also intends to set up cameras inside the house in order to film its destruction. Many of the neighbouring houses have already gone over the edge and the property has recently developed cracks in the past few weeks so it seems the artist may need to paint rather quickly to get his moneys worth.

Artist Eugenie Scrase has won BBC Two’s School of Saatchi show with this tree trunk artwork. The piece beat five finalists to win a place in Charles Saatchi’s current show. The artist found the fallen tree whilst out walking in East London and asked the owner if she could remove the section of fence it was impaled on. The work entitles Trunkated Trunk has been on show at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, Russia since October. It’s certainly interesting but its not really my idea of art.

These gargoyles are made
out of toilet roll tubes.
French artist Junior Fritz Jacquet
makes the faces by moulding the
toilet roll tube to create the sculpture.
He starts off by constructing the
eyes and then creates the nose,
mouth and the rest of the face.
When finished the face is
coated in different coloured
pigments and fitted to a
metal stalk so it can be displayed.