Top Artists Tackle Torture

Freedom From Torture

Leading artists, including Antony Gormley, the Chapman brothers, Paula Rego, Cornelia Parker, and Gavin Turk, band together to raise funds for the survivors of torture

Freedom from Torture: The Art Auction will see leading visual artists unite to raise funds to support the survivors of torture. Antony Gormley, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Paula Rego, Cornelia Parker, Gavin Turk, Stuart Semple, Gordon Cheung, Joe Tilson, Julian Opie, Gillian Ayres and Michael Craig Martin are among a host of over 50 leading contemporary artists who have donated works to be part of the auction. Edmund de Waal has created a new work specifically for the purpose of the event.

The auction, supported by Christie’s, is set to take place at Village Underground on the 28th November 2011, and includes a silent auction throughout the evening as well as a live auction of twenty lots. Guide prices start at £350. Christie’s director Piers Boothman will be auctioneer for the evening. An auction catalogue will be available. Anybody can register to attend and view all the works HERE

Praise for Freedom From Torture:

‘Those who have been tortured often say that one of the worst effects, after the agony of the torture itself, is the refusal of others to listen or to accept their stories. Freedom from Torture listens, accepts and attempts to treat the sufferers – which is often a long, complex and painful process. Please support it and help the men, women and children who have experienced the darkest and most hidden manifestation of man’s inhumanity to man.’ [Emma Thompson]

‘Natural disasters, illness, accident, misfortune: the world has enough ways to try our courage and our optimism. But torture is the worst thing of all. The deliberate infliction of pain or humiliation or fear is something colder and darker than anything that nature can do; it comes out of a depth of human wickedness that it can sicken the soul to contemplate. That’s why Freedom from Torture is so necessary. It heals minds as well as bodies, and restores the experience of decency and trust and goodness that has been so cruelly wiped away. Its work is some of the most valuable that’s taking place anywhere, and I’m very happy to support it.’ [Philip Pullman]

‘I’ve painted throughout my life and since joining the Open Art Studio have been painting regularly. I find art a way of understanding my emotions and depicting violent experiences I’ve witnessed in political conflict. I’ve found art a form of therapy which has helped me expose my emotions and my experience of violence in Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war. Since I joined the Studio I’ve had a chance to meet people who were physically and mentally tortured from all around the world. After all, the Open Art Studio is a soft place to fall.’ [Uvindu Kurukulasuriya]

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