Britain's art pack does its bit to help
One-off auction to raise money for torture victims
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Your support makes all the difference.Work from some of the biggest names in contemporary art will go on sale tomorrow in a one-off charity auction in east London, being held to raise money for sufferers of organised violence and torture who arrive in Britain.
More than 50 leading artists, including the sculptor Antony Gormley, brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, illustrator Quentin Blake, Marc Quinn and Sam Taylor-Wood, have donated their work to the charity Freedom from Torture to support victims seeking refuge in the UK.
A brightly coloured image of the Tiananmen Square massacre by the multimedia artist Gordon Cheung will be auctioned alongside hand-coloured etchings of dinosaurs and McDonald's Happy Meals by the Chapman brothers, and a black-and-white carbon and casein work on paper by the Turner Prize-winner Gormley, which has a guide price of £10,000.
Blake, who is donating a digital print, Life Under Water, said his print from a brush drawing in Indian ink is one of a series of "everyday people in their normal clothes who find themselves swimming underwater".
The artist and curator Stuart Semple, who has collaborated with Lady Gaga in previous work, said his piece, Diamond, represents the "greed around the diamond trade", "corruption" and "the inner beauty inside people".
Jake Chapman, who created three original works for the auction with his brother, Dinos, said their donations included "three of our favourite themes: swastikas, McDonald's and dinosaurs, which all go hand in hand".
Among those attending the auction, "Artists Drawing a Line under Torture", to be held at Village Underground in Shoreditch, will be survivors of abuse who have found refuge in Britain.
Blake urged art lovers to attend, saying the "resilience" demonstrated by victims of torture "in the face of seemingly impossible odds... is something I find inspiring."
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