Brent Zephyrine

For the first time in T&T, an art gallery has utilised the con­ve­nience of an on­line auc­tion in or­der to at­tract prospec­tive in­ter­na­tion­al bid­ders. So said the cre­ator and art col­lec­tor of the Arch­bish­op's Ap­peal Art Auc­tion, Clay­ton De Fre­itas, at Arch­bish­op Ed­ward Gilbert's house on Mar­aval Road, Port-of-Spain, on Sat­ur­day. The auc­tion, which marked Gilbert's last of­fi­cial ap­pear­ance as Arch­bish­op of Port-of-Spain, wit­nessed the show­case of 90 pieces of art which was do­nat­ed by sev­er­al promi­nent lo­cal artists such as Jack­ie Hink­son, Boscoe Hold­er and Abi­gail Hadeed, as well as in­mates of the Car­rera Is­land Prison.

As De Fre­itas ex­plained, peo­ple from around the world were free to reg­is­ter on­line and place their bids on the auc­tion's Web site, which was con­stant­ly up­dat­ed to re­flect cur­rent bid­ding in­cre­ments and catered for safe and ef­fi­cient cred­it card pay­ments. Bid­ding for the art pieces start­ed from as low as $1,200, while two oth­ers adorn­ing the en­trance of the Arch­bish­op's mag­nif­i­cent stair­case-paint­ed by artist Sarah Beck­ett-com­menced its bid­ding at $29,000 re­spec­tive­ly. As part of the Arch­bish­op's Ap­peal, the auc­tion rep­re­sent­ed one in a se­ries of fund-rais­ing ven­tures at­tract­ing Gilbert's per­son­al en­dorse­ment as the Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain strives to raise funds to­wards the restora­tion of the Cathe­dral of the Im­mac­u­late Con­cep­tion lo­cat­ed on In­de­pen­dence Square, Port-of-Spain.

Ac­cord­ing to Gilbert, restora­tion would be done in five phas­es, the first of which was es­ti­mat­ed to cost $15 mil­lion. He said it was his in­ten­tion to raise $1 mil­lion from this art auc­tion in or­der to com­mence work in No­vem­ber. He said he was con­fi­dent that this no­ble cause would con­tin­ue suc­cess­ful­ly un­der the stew­ard­ship of his suc­ces­sor Coad­ju­tor Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris.