Co Dublin, Ireland (Rep.) - Frank Buckley is an artist who bought a €360,000 house on a 100 per cent mortgage just before the market crashed leaving it worth around €220,000 and Frank with an insoluble problem.

By way of comment he started making mixed media artworks using shredded decommissioned euros he got from the Irish mint. This developed into the creation of a gallery at the Glass House in Dublin for which he used some salvaged ply saved from a graffiti exhibition and free wood framing from builders merchants Chadwicks.

He needed some cladding and approached the mint again who offered to help with a trailer load of six inch brickettes each made from €50,000 which Franks says totalled €1.4 billion. On a BBC interview he says it was enough to clad 27 square metres.

The exhibition, called 'Expressions of Recession', is at the Glass House, Coke Lane, Smithfield, Dublin.

Could it possibly be that 27 square metres of six inch brickettes is more like 1,200 brickettes (a reasonable trailer load by the way) at €50,000 each which would make more like €60m - not €1.4bn - and that is all part of the fun. If so he's fooled the BBC and the Irish Times, and many more who could have known better, which you could argue is exactly what the bankers did to Europe's governments and it is the gullible electorate who is now paying the cost.

Irish Times: Artist works through €1.4bn to put his house in order
Billion Euro House: House Gallery

Story Type:  Feature

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