Sale for our registered customers

June 15th, 2005


Our latest online sale ends tomorrow at 19.00 BST. We have these sales occasionally especially for our registered customers. Why not register and we will keep you up to date with our special offers.

Winners of BP Portrait Award 2005

June 14th, 2005


1st Prize - Dean Marsh
Dean Marsh (b.1968) is a London-based artist who following a Foundation course at Ravensbourne College of Design exhibited several times in the BP Portrait Award - in 1993, 1994, 1996 and 2000. He won fourth prize in 2003 for Man with Grey Scarfe and was commended in 2002 for his portrait of Rosalind Savill.


2nd Prize - Saul Robertson
Saul Robertson (b.1978) lives and works in Glasgow. In the past two years he has won both the David Cargill Senior Award and the David Cargill Award at the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and was Young Artist of the Year at the Hunting Art Prizes in 2001. He has exhibited extensively throughout Britain.


3rd Prize - Gregory Cumins
Gregory Cumins (b.1973) graduated in sculpture in 1999 from Paris’s École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts where he was taught by British sculptor Richard Deacon. He then worked in a website agency as a graphic designer and web-designer. In 2003 he started painting and has won the Prix spécial du Jury at this year’s Salon de Montrouge exhibition.


4th Prize - Conor Walton
Conor Walton (b.1970) lives and works in County Wicklow. Born in Dublin, he studied at the National College of Art and Design. Following his MA in Art History and Theory at the University of Essex, he went to Florence to study painting and old master techniques. He returned to Dublin in 1996, where his fourth solo exhibition will be held in June 2006.

Lyric theatre Belfast saved by cash injection

June 8th, 2005


The eccentric inhabitants of a crumbling Irish manor house have invited in the reality TV cameras in a desperate attempt to avert its collapse. The plot of a new play by Belfast’s award-winning Marie Jones echoes the real-life battle of the Lyric Theatre in the city, which has for years been struggling to raise funds to prevent its roof caving in. Yesterday, after a struggle in which the actor Liam Neeson begged New York’s literati to save his spiritual home, the theatre was finally assured of a new £12m building.

Plea for artwork to go into space station

June 7th, 2005

Artists who want their work to boldly go beyond the upper atmosphere have three weeks to come up with ideas for the planet’s most unusual gallery.

Initial consultation on a cultural use for the International Space Station, which orbits Earth 250 miles into space, finishes at the end of this month.

Turner prize surprise: painter is favourite

June 3rd, 2005


In the wonderful world of contemporary art the nominations for this year’s Turner prize are suitably bizarre. A collagist who customises bicycles, a photographic artist who films digital clocks, and a musician who works with plastic bags, wool and safety pins.

But the most subversive element on the shortlist announced yesterday is the appearance of a conventional painter whose subject matter is traditional - the landscape, the bunch of flowers, the sunset - and whose medium is the choice of Joseph Mallord William Turner himself, oil paints. As Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate, announced the artists on the shortlist for the £25,000 prize, the bookies William Hill made Gillian Carnegie, 34, from London, the even-money favourite as the first artist who exclusively uses paint as a medium to be nominated for the prize in five years.

ITV celebrity painting competition

May 24th, 2005

This is a press release from Granada Television

Are you an aspiring artist or budding portrait painter? Have you held a life long dream of seeing your carefully crafted drawing or painting receive national recognition…?
We are looking for anyone and everyone who has ever fancied putting paint to paper.

We are holding a national portrait painting competition this summer giving aspiring artists a chance to paint some of our best loved celebrities.

Our contestants will come from all walks of life and may not have painted anything but the garden gate before. Perhaps you’re already a keen amateur artist or maybe you’re simply a van driver who’d rather be Van Gogh. If you’re over 18 and fancy having a go then apply for an information pack by calling:
0871 200 2200 (calls charged at a local rate)
Leave your details and we’ll send you an application pack. Or click title of this post to visit the ITV website for entry details.

Artists to get cut of resale values

May 23rd, 2005

Irish artists will be entitled to a cut from resales of their work from next January. Legislation introduced in the autumn will give painters and sculptors at least 4% of the hammer price of works worth €3,000 plus.

Rolf Harris to paint Queen’s portrait

May 14th, 2005


The Queen has sat for more than 120 artists, including Lucian Freud and Pietro Annigoni. This time the cameras will roll as Her Majesty sits for the popular art evangelist as he dabs away at an oil portrait marking the landmark birthday next April.

Corporate art website launch

May 10th, 2005


We are delighted to launch Contract Image dealing with art for business.

Rock, Paper, Payoff: Child’s Play Wins Auction House an Art Sale

May 2nd, 2005

It may have been the most expensive game of rock, paper, scissors ever played.

Takashi Hashiyama, president of Maspro Denkoh Corporation, an electronics company based outside of Nagoya, Japan, could not decide whether Christie’s or Sotheby’s should sell the company’s art collection, which is worth more than $20 million, at next week’s auctions in New York.

So he decided to get the two auction houses to have a game of rock, paper, and scissors.