art

The north of England has a huge new attraction, after a giant figure of a woman appeared carved into the landscape near Northumberland. The 400m long artwork is called Northumberlandia, though is also known as ‘The Lady of The North', and is the brainchild of landscape sculptor Charles Jencks.

The figure took seven years to plan and a further two to build, and is said to be the largest landscape replica of the female body in history. It is made up of 1.5 million tonnes of rock, soil, stone and clay, all of which were by-products of a nearby mine, and together make the tallest point a massive 34m high.

It began life as part of the planning permission for the mine to be created on the site, and a spokesperson from the Banks Group mining company revealed:

"It cost £3m for us to create Northumberlandia. We wanted to give something back. When we end a project on a mining site we restore it. With this project we heard there was some local concern about a negative effect on tourism, so we decided to go one step further than usual and create a tourist attraction to leave as our legacy."

The sculpture will be officially opened today by Princess Anne, and members of the public and go and explore the piece from Wednesday onwards.

A pensioner's restoration of a fresco that has adorned the wall of a Spanish church for more than a century has become an internet sensation. The famous painting of Jesus Christ by artist Elias Garcia Martinez had been deteriorating for years until 81-year-old Cecilia Gimenez decided to do something about it.

The results can be seen above. On the left is the original, whilst on the right is the hilarious attempted restoration. The new version has swept the internet, with people likening it to anything from a bear to Chewbacca from Star Wars. Indeed, even the BBC correspondent Christian Fraser described how it "resembles a crayon sketch of a very hairy monkey in an ill-fitting tunic".

After starting her masterpiece, the elderly woman soon realised she was a little out of her depth and contacted her city councillor in charge of cultural affairs. Luckily he was sympathetic to her attempts:

"I think she had good intentions. Next week she will meet with a repairer and explain what kind of materials she used. If we can't fix it, we will probably cover the wall with a photo of the painting."

Since appearing on British news sites, a number of famous paintings have been given the same treatment. What do you think of these? An improvement?