It's art Jim, but not as we know it.

To the immediate left are two pictures. On the left of the two, there's a lovely stone cottage at Sudborough Green Lodge in Northamptonshire. On the right, is the same stone cottage as it recently became an 'art' installation. 

Over to a spokesperson for Fermynwoods Contemporary Art, who were awarded £74,000 of National Lottery funding by Arts Council England, part of which was spent on commissioning the 'inspiring' Richard Woods for the project above: 'Artist Richard Woods has clad the cottages in a unique, candy-coloured faux stone cladding makeover that reinvigorates the rural landscape.'

• When has stone-cladding of this nature ever been aesthetically pleasing?
• It's not even real stone-cladding (so at least its less permanent) and using the word 'faux' doesn't make it alluring or artistic; 'fake' would have done just fine.
• It's not unique, it's from Hansel and Gretel.
• The reason for its uniqueness in the real world is self-explanatory.
• When was it decided that nature, particularly like the area of forestry that this cottage sits in, was in any need of 're-invigoration'? "Oooh this elephant's boring, can't we paint it loads of colours?" 

This project is just the sort of self-serving, self-indulgent, vacuous, pseudo-intellectual nonsense that gives 'contemporary art' a bad name. Handed the bitter pill of the artwork itself, you're not even allowed to wash it down with a refreshing gulp of humility, for example, an admission that 'it's just a bit of fun'. Instead, you have to read on websites and press releases about it being 'daring' and 'reinvigorating' i.e. the same ad infinitum brand of justification that those in modern art circles do so well, one that's based on nothing but lots of grandiose statements about ideas that have absolutely no relation to the real world. You don't have to be talented or visionary, all you have to be is willing to exploit the fact that there's no definition of what 'art' is; anything you say is art, just, well, is art. "To me, this bloody tampon hanging from a packet of digestive biscuits really represents how the female is often considered the other in our world of constant consumption and that in some way her monthly cycle is both a cry for help and an attempt to rid herself of a form of guilt manifest in all women." Hey presto! It's that easy. Easy and really, really lazy.

More photos of the breathtaking transformation at http://www.fermynwoods.co.uk/elsewhere/forestry.htm