Artfulness or Deceit?

The Sensation Exhibition of 1997 was perhaps the most notorious art show of the 20th century. Sophie Arlington, her husband, the pop star Johnny Jones, and their friends Mark Arnold and Henri Le Cerf have hot tickets for the opening. At the Royal Academy they meet Arthur Swale, who is exhibiting his outrageous work 'the Narcissist'; Arthur will become more important and influential on them over the course of the next couple of years, as he himself becomes a world-famous contemporary artist. Each of the four friends connects with an artwork at the exhibition, and each of these artworks goes on to become somehow entwined in the course of their lives. We follow these characters from London to Paris, and finally to Venice where Arthur Swale shocks the World at the Biennale 1999. In Artfulness or Deceit?, the second novel in a series starting with his first novel Instinct or Intuition?, Andrew Weight uses the theme of contemporary art at the end of the 20th century as the background to the lives and loves of the same four characters. Nothing is ever quite what it seems either in art or real life as the story heads to a shocking conclusion. 

Andrew Weight grew up in Hastings on the East Sussex coast. After graduating from Reading University with a degree in Sociology, he worked in the finance industry in London and Geneva, latterly as a founding partner of an award-winning wealth management business. He left this business and moved to the Swiss countryside in 2009. He has now returned to his roots in East Sussex where, as well as writing, he advises small businesses and start-ups and buys and sells classic motorcycles.