Artists await news of artworks in fire

Some of Britain’s leading modern artists were today waiting to learn if their works, thought to be worth millions of euro, have been destroyed in a warehouse fire.

Works said to have perished in Monday’s blaze at an east London warehouse include Tracey Emin’s tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, and Hell, by Jake and Dinos Chapman.

Investigators are still trying to discover the cause of the fire at the Leyton warehouse which housed many works owned by collector Charles Saatchi.

Paintings and sculptures by several major British artists were stored at the site belonging to Momart, one of the country’s leading art handlers and storers.

A Saatchi spokesman said: “We are waiting for Momart to give us final confirmation. Charles is absolutely devastated.”

He added: “We are hoping that things aren’t as bad as first indications suggest.

“Obviously works have been lost but until we can confirm more, it’s probably wrong to comment.

“Everybody here is just devastated.”

Fifty firefighters battled the blaze in the single storey warehouse.

Around 500 people were evacuated from the area surrounding the fire on an industrial estate amid fears that a number of gas cylinders had overheated and threatened to explode.

London Fire Brigade said last night there were still some pockets of fire which they were damping down.

A Scotland Yard spokeswoman said that as the fire was still ongoing no investigation could be carried out into the cause as yet.

The Chapman brothers confirmed that their work Hell, featuring soldiers molesting each other, had been destroyed in the fire.

Saatchi reportedly paid half-a-million pounds for Hell, which took two years to create, for a retrospective at his gallery. It is a series of nine miniature landscapes with bloody scenes of disaster and destruction displayed in glass tanks.

The brothers, two of the UK’s most controversial artists, cast and hand painted more than 5,000 figures, including skeletons, Nazi soldiers and human mutations.

They reacted to the news by saying the piece “was only art” and said they would make it again.

Jake Chapman earlier joked to The Daily Telegraph: “It can’t be burnt because it’s hotter in hell than it is there.

“I suspect in fact it will in fact have gone up in value if it has been burnt to death.”

Turner Prize-nominated Emin won notoriety with her tent, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995, embroidered with the names of all her lovers.

Saatchi is thought to have paid £40,000 (€59,900) for the controversial artwork with 102 names in it.

Work by Sarah Lucas, another artist, famous for substituting cucumbers and kebabs for genitals, is also feared destroyed in the blaze.

Momart is responsible for packaging and transporting works around the country and installing major exhibitions, such as the 1999 Monet at the Royal Academy.

Carole Hastings, director of Momart, whose client list includes the National Gallery, Tate Modern and Britain and Buckingham Palace, said she believed no works will have survived.

“This is grave,” she said yesterday. “If the fire has been burning since yesterday there’s not going to be anything we can retrieve.

“I don’t think that anything will have survived.

“The fire brigade think that the fire began in an adjacent area and spread to our site.

“No one can get within 300 yards of the area. We have been in contact with all our clients.”

She would not discuss which works were housed in the 10,000 square foot warehouse, or which clients used it, but said: “There is a selection of work there, some by young British artists, some sculptures, some paintings, a whole array of stuff.”

She added: “We are devastated, very upset. Our managing director was away and flew back straight away when he heard the news.

“We have a very close relationship with virtually everybody who has got storage there and they are very, very upset.

“But they have been very understanding.”

Most of the works in the warehouse will have been insured individually by galleries and collectors.

Malcolm Tarling, spokesman for the Association of British Insurers, said: “Obviously I know nothing about the insurance arrangements in this case.

“It would make sense that well known works of art are individually insured.

“Such works will generally be insured on the basis of what they could reasonably be expected to fetch at auction.”