Jake and Dinos Chapman plan tattoo parlour show in home town of Hastings

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/17/jake-dinos-chapman-tattoo-show-hastings-jerwood

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If the public stumps up enough money, Jake and Dinos Chapman will be on their way home to mount an exhibition in their native Hastings, with the possibility of rewarding their donors by turning them into works of art – bearing Chapman skin tattoos.

Liz Gilmore, director of the Jerwood Gallery, in Hastings, promises it will be the "biggest baddest show yet" by the pair. However, the show would be relying on the public coming up with £25,000 over the next 76 days through a crowd-funding effort launched by the Art Fund for museum projects.

Jake said: "We will be seeking out the dark underbelly of Hastings, to find its seething evil. And then we're going to tickle it." He added that it was "the only way we're going to get down to Hastings to see our mum and dad".

The brothers will also be "rectifying" works of art sourced from local junk shops and brought in by members of the public.

Art donors should bear in mind that on past Chapman brothers form their much loved picture of great aunt Agatha could well end up with pop eyes and Micky Mouse ears. Worse, "some of the art will probably be so bad it will just need burning", Jake suggested.

He will also be running the tattoo parlour at the show. "There will be pain. Pain and blood," he promised.

Neither brother was expert with the needle, he admitted. Jake's left wrist has got a blue star which he drew himself; his entire right forearm is covered with a scribbly blue drawing by Dinos. "He isn't very good, and he really dug in with the needle – it was very painful."

The original tattoo idea, which the Frieze Art Fair turned down on health and safety grounds, involved one of the brothers setting up with the needles and inks inside a large wooden box with a hole in it. The victims were to sit outside the box and stick their arm through the hole, which would then be clamped in place: their arm would be returned more or less intact but bearing a surprise design.

The rewards on offer for donors to the Chapman brothers' project range from regular updates and a citation on the website for £5, to a Chapman brothers roll of loo paper for £60, and a visit to their London studio, for £995. Removable transfer tattoos are to be at the £25 mark.

Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said the fund had concentrated in the past on helping museums raise large amounts of money for acquisitions, often working with a few rich donors.

He cited the £10m raised by the National Portrait Gallery to buy the spectacular Van Dyck self-portrait. However that appeal also brought well over £1m in small donations from more than 10,000 individuals. Deuchar said that increasingly they were being asked by museums for advice not just on buying art but on encouraging donations for modest projects costing no more than £25,000.

Research shows that 93% of museum visitors do give to charity, but only 40% of them give to museums: their stated reasons include not being aware that museums need their donations to feeling that such funding is confined to very wealthy patrons.

All the money raised through the Art Happens site will go straight to the museums, and the Art Fund has already covered the start-up and first year's running costs through the Arts Council and individual funders.

If museum projects miss their fund raising target by an agreed deadline, donors get the option of having their money returned or transferred to another project. All the projects will offer rewards to donors, from regular updates to invitations, to gifts such as limited edition prints.

The five pilot projects include mowing a William Morris pattern into a wild flower meadow at Compton Verney, in a garden created by the landscape designer Dan Pearson - who will be making the first big intervention in the parkland of the Warwickshire mansion since Capability Brown's designs of the 18th century.

Meanwhile, the Bowes Museum, in county Durham, needs to commission a special moving frame for a magnificent 15th century altarpiece that would let the paintings on the back of the panels be seen by the public for the first time.

And, the Ironbridge Gorge complex of museums wants £25,000 to transform the displays in an 1832 riverside warehouse, while St Fagans National History Museum, in Wales, is looking for £25,000 to construct a replica iron age farmstead with thick clay walls and a thatched roof.