The Prince's Trust is raising money by asking famous people to design and paint masks or boxes which will be sold at auction.

The following is an excerpt from the Masks 96 brochure.

WE AIM TO INSPIRE DISADVANTAGED YOUNG PEOPLE ACROSS THE UK TO ACHIEVE THEIR FULL POTENTIAL. IN 1996 WE WILL HELP AT LEAST 20,000 INDIVIDUALS TO IMPROVE THIR PERFORMANCE AT SCHOOL, TO ESTABLISH THEIR OWN BUSINESSES, TO SECURE A JOB OR DEVELOP A SKILL. We will be helping to develop the citizens of the future and enabling them to make a contribution to the country's future well-being. Although the great majority of those whom we assist will be unemployed, homeless or just hold themselves in low esteem, all will have the potential to achieve something positive for themselves and the community in which they will live.

MASKS

NOVEMBER - DECEMBER 1995 Masks arrive with artists and celebrities . worldwide courtesy of DHL

FEBRUARY 1996 Masks completed and resumed

SPRING 1996 The Exhibition Catalogue is printed

LATE SUMMER 1996 National Exhibition, London

AUTUMN 1996 Public Auction by Sotheby's

Autumn 1996 Sealed Bid Auction

CURRENT PATRONS Brand Papers, DHL, Kodak, LIBERTY, Marks & Spencer, Oce, Rank Xerox, Sotheby's, Wiggins Teape and 3i Group plc.

Prince's Trust Events Ltd. is a Registered Company no.2125171 All proeeds from this event will be donated to The Prince's Trust Registered Charity no.1018177

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From the book 'Masks'

CELEBRITY, TOO, MASKS.

David Reason, a founder member of the Centre for Psychoanalytic Studies in the Humanities at The University of Kent, opens this section with his thoughts on the analytical approach to interpreting mask designs. David was invited to provide individual analysis of a number of masks selected by him, in most cases without knowledge of the artist's name. His analysis, therefore, is centred on the individual mask designs rather than the personalities of those who painted them.
Uri's Mask was one out of twenty that David Reason chose out of five hundred masks without knowing the identity of the celebrity.

Uri Geller

Click for a bigger image
of the Box and Mask

Psychic

The face stages a cosmic allegory. In a detailed and intricate design we are faced as it were - by a progression from difference and aspiration to that play of dissimilarity and similarity that is the special domain of mirrors, gods and death. In the region of the mouth, there is drink and there is fire, perhaps the fire of the Pentecost, bestowing the gift of tongues. At the nostrils, "God" and "Peace" tag the inhalation and exhalation of the breath, and via labyrinthine spirals and golden domed flying saucers, we are led to profiled faces within profiled faces, each facing each at the crowning chakra of the human head. It seems that one intent is to allegorize the face, writing there and seeing written there an understanding which draws on the Western reception of Eastern religion and the lay understanding of Jungian and Post-Jungian psychology, and to find a resolution at the highest point in some vision of mirroring harmony. It is equally striking that the maker of this mask has an urge to overwhelm its human face with a meticulous and obsessional detail. Hand in hand with the representation of an aspiration to a tranquil and accommodating harmony goes a means of representation which comprehensively devours the surface of the mask and allows nothing to escape its snare of inclusion.

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Uri Geller is inviting anyone around the world to be involved with The Prince's Trust fund raising effort. If you feel that you want to help young people then please send your donations to The Prince's Trust, 18 Park Square East, London NW1 4LH, England. Tel. 0171 543 1234. Fax 0171 543 1200.