Artists go incognito to support a great cause

A sale of art by Tracey Emin and a host of Irish artists will raise funds for the Jack and Jill Foundation. Every piece is €50 but buyers won’t know the identity of the artist until after they’ve purchased it, writes Marjorie Brennan.

Lucinda Hall, the exhibition manager of the charity art fundraiser Incognito, in aid of the Jack and Jill Foundation, is a happy camper after having her event named Most Innovative Campaign at the National Fundraising Awards.

The unique selling point of this art sale is that, as the name suggests, anyone who purchases a postcard-sized piece of art for €50 doesn’t know who is responsible until they turn it over to see the name on the back.

The inspiration for the charity fundraiser came from an unusual source, says Hall.

“My hairdresser in Dublin used to disappear every year for about three days. You know how annoying that is when you want get your hair done,” she laughs.

“It turns out that every year, he goes to London to the Secret Art Fair at the Royal College of Art and camps overnight the night before. He buys three postcard-sized paintings by original artists — I think they’re around £35 each — and he could get a Damien Hirst or a Tracey Emin. I thought it would make a great charity fundraiser.”

Hall brought the idea to her friend Jonathan Irwin, who, in 1997, had founded the Jack and Jill Foundation with his wife Mary Ann O’Brien, to provide home health care to seriously ill children.

The charity was established as a result of their experience of caring for their son Jack, who was born with severe brain damage in 1996.

“Jonathan thought it was a great idea and asked me to do it. I said ‘I haven’t a clue what I’m doing but I’ll work it out’,” says Hall.

And work it out she did, in spectacular fashion.

There were queues around the block for last year’s launch event at Dublin’s Solomon Gallery, which raised €85,000. This year more than 2,000 miniature pieces of art have been donated and the hope is that even more money will be raised.

While organising the event is no easy task, Hall is no stranger to such challenges; she was on the original production team for Phantom of the Opera, Les Misérables and Cats, and had her own production company in London before marrying well-known horse-racing presenter Robert Hall and moving to Co Kildare.

“Theatre producers spend their lives asking for money,” she laughs. “That was familiar territory for me. It’s a lot easier for this because the artists are so willing to do it.

"Artists are usually asked to do a whole painting for auction, which could take weeks. This is just a little card, 5in by 7in; they can just do a squiggle if they want.”

This year, well-known artists donating their work include Tracey Emin, Nick Miller and Richard Gorman, but Hall says while nabbing a famous name is part of the fun, most people are drawn to purchase art that appeals to them aesthetically.

I know this year the aficionados will want to find the Tracey Emin. There are so many brilliant artists, though, known and unknown. You are buying what you like as opposed to who it is by. It’s true meritocracy, it is just as likely to be by someone not famous as someone famous, but if you like it, you will want to keep it.

Hall says organisers were so taken aback by the response to the event last year that they didn’t really get the chance to gauge people’s reactions when they found out the artist behind their postcard.

“It was absolutely manic. We imagined the first day that we would be standing around, a customer would choose a number, we would hand it to them, turn it over, see who painted it and say ‘wow’.

"But as it turned out, we had a queue that started at 6.30am and it went on building until there were about 350 people there. We opened at 10am and we just had to get through the queue.”

Hall says it is hugely gratifying and rewarding to work on such a project.

“It’s brilliant — €16 buys you an hour’s nursing, so the €85,000 we raised last year covered a huge number of hours.

“Thanks to the generosity of the Solomon Gallery and our brilliant sponsors this year, the William Fry law firm, every penny goes directly to providing nursing.”

In the meantime, Hall says, she’ll be glad not to see another postcard for a while.

“I talk postcards, dream postcards and eat postcards. I said to a friend who went on holiday yesterday, please don’t send me a postcard.”

The collection can be viewed online at www.incognito.ie and www.jackandjill.ie. The artworks will be on sale, on a first-come, first-served basis, for €50 each in the Solomon Gallery, Dublin, off Grafton St, from April 6-8.