Observations: A date with Keira and the most expensive match ever made
Gavin Turk's Spent Match from 2005, a bronze cast of a used match painted to look real and Rankin's seductive photograph of Keira Knightley with a blindfold on her head are among the lots that have been donated by artists to a charity auction that will take place at the Royal College of Art to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support in September.
Sam Taylor-Wood's Ascension Still (2006), a photograph of a man with a white dove flapping on his head, taken from her film of the same name, has a guide price of £750. Bidding for Gillian Wearing's C-Type photograph of Lily Cole (2010), meanwhile, in which the model and actress looks Edwardian in a high-collared dress will start at £850. And an example of Ringo Starr's computer art Is It time (2005) – a grinning orange cartoon man with sticking-up hair could be yours for only £400. The pop star began making computer art in the late Nineties while touring, because it gave him “something to do in all those crazy hotels you have to stay in on the road”.
Turk's sculpture of a match is real-sized and was inspired by Jasper Johns' Painted Bronze (1960) of two ale cans and René Magritte's painting of a pipe titled, The Treachery of Images (This Is Not a Pipe) (1929). “It's almost like a mistake when you see the used match,” says Turk. “I have placed it in a desktop vitrine or else it goes missing. There is a sense of it being made useless by use – something spent then transformed into something everlasting.” The auction guide price is £2,125. “It's a lot to pay for an old match,” says the artist. He is working on an oversized bronze door sculpture in France humorously titled, L'age d'or.
Other donations include Antony Gormley's drawing Feel 11 of a dark figure; Daisy de Villeneuve's silkscreen print Killer Heels (2009) and Maggi Hambling's evocative painting Night Wave (2012). Natasha Law has donated a silkscreen print Gold Skirt (2011) and Rob Ryan a fairytale-style artwork You Are My Universe (2012) with two people at its centre. Also up for grabs is a colourful painting by The Mighty Boosh's Noel Fielding's The Police Like Me (2010), inspired by the time he was strip-searched by the police.
Macmillan De'Longhi Art Auction, Royal College of Art, London SW7 (www.rca.ac.uk) on 25 September. For free tickets, email delonghi.artauction@clarioncomms.co.uk
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