Art truly is in the eye of the beholder.

Separate the mystique and snobbery from the objets d'art in question and you can be left with something incredibly beautiful, incredibly ugly or painfully dull. And the price tag will not usually differentiate.

Works by contemporary British artists are going on sale at Homebase stores - not in York, unfortunately - in an experiment to bring a wider public into contact with such work.

For instance, there are handy gardening trowels and forks with handles that looks like a futuristic cactus - attractive, but not necessarily practical, especially at £45.

There's also a row of decorative wooden wall pegs arranged like landing perches for Hilda Ogden's flight of mantelpiece ducks.

In a DIY store, though, be careful. That innocent-looking square pile of bricks may not be for taking away to build your barbecue, it may be some tortured artist's latest masterpiece on its way to glory and riches in the Tate Gallery.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.