British artists make art from ashes of the Mackintosh library for charity auction

Works by 25 artists—including David Shrigley, Tacita Dean and Anish Kapoor—made from the debris of the Glasgow School of Art‘s Mackintosh library, ravaged by fire in 2014, will be auctioned in the Ash for Art charity sale at Christie’s, London on 8 March. The Scottish artist Douglas Gordon has made a burnt wood cast in bronze entitled A Given. “I was sent a small section of wood that came from the famous library in the building,” Gordon says. “It sat in my studio in Berlin, on my desk, next to a classic 1960s ashtray that a friend had given me—the irony. And when I looked at the pieces of wood, I moved them slightly and realised that it was, indeed, a cross.” Grayson Perry’s Art is Dead, Long Live Art contains charcoal from the ruins. The school has so far raised around £18.5m of the £32m needed to restore the Rennie Mackintosh-designed building.