SKY Television, New Zealand’s largest satellite television provider, asked us to promote the newly discounted price of their Arts Channel.

For just an added $2.95 a week, SKY subscribers could sign up and enjoy the life and work of some of history’s greatest artists.

We created a radio campaign that put into perspective the enormous price these artists paid to create their work, and the comparative pittance SKY subscribers paid to enjoy it.

ANN: Lucky for you, you’re not brilliant.Brilliant people have an unhealthy disposition for depression.Take Mark Rothko.He was brilliant.And depressed.In the Great Depression, no less.

Depressed when his art wouldn’t sell.And depressed when it sold to the wrong people.Depressed when his wife left him.And depressed when his second wife did the same.While critics busily tore at his self belief, accountants studiously siphoned his money away.

For 66 years, he journeyed towards inescapable sadness; a victim of anti-Semitism, commercialism and sexual impotence.

In his final hour, he sat alone at his kitchen table with a razor blade and no reason left to live.

And as the last drop of blood emptied out of him, he would have come to the grim realisation that his life’s work had cost him everything.Good thing he didn’t know, 39 years later, it would only cost you $2.95.Then he really would have been down. The Arts Channel on SKY, just $2.95 a week.

Art, for an insultingly low price.