Artists donated work for Jules Doyle’s The Art of Staying At Home charity auction in aid of Meals for the NHS and the Corona Relief Fund

A furloughed Hackney art consultant has put her talents to good use by organising an online auction to raise funds for NHS workers.

Jules Doyle, who lives in Dalston with her two teenage sons, put together The Art of Staying Home - selling donated artworks in aid of Meals for the NHS, and Global Giving’s Corona Relief Fund.

The auction, which started at 9am on April 10 and ends at 9pm on April 17, has won support and donations from artists all over the world, including Hackney photographic artist Karen Knorr.

She has donated a piece that appeared in the Royal Academy’s 2019 Summer Exhibition.

and shows an elephant from one of her trips to India.

Jules Doyle told the Gazette: “I wanted to do something. I could either tidy out my cupboard or do something useful. The workers and the NHS are doing amazingly and I felt useless for a couple of days and I thought what can I do to help?

“I decided in this emergency it would a good idea to approach artists to donate work and raise money for charities. Thinking they’d all say no but they all said yes, they were all amazing, supportive and kind.”

Sara Pope, Clare Grossman, Hepzibah Swinford, Dora Holtzhandler and Phil Dean aka The Shoreditch Sketcher, have also donated works to the auction, with prices ranging from £20 to £1200.

Knorr is Professor of Photography at the University of the Creative Arts and Doyle said of her artwork Temple Servant Amber Fort: “I stood in the Royal Academy looking at her work last year and never in a billion years would I dream that that I’d be auctioning off her work.”

Collectively bids have so far raised £1,500, but Doyle hopes there will be a rash of activity nearer the deadline.

The creative founder of art consultancy service Blank White Space, hopes to raise £5,000 in total to buy meals for frontline NHS workers and support struggling communities around the world hit by coronovirus.

“I never dreamt that it would all happen, I wasn’t that confident, but now I think we will get about £5,000.”

To put in a bid go to blankwhitespace.co.uk