Artists immortalised in Lego

Salvador Dali, Damien Hirst and Gilbert and George are among the names who have been made into small, plastic figures at the hands of a group called the Little Artists.

They have adapted Lego figures to look like the artists, even recreating miniature versions of Dali's Lobster Phone and Hirst's shark in formaldehyde.

The works are on show at the Art2003 London Art Fair, which opened on Wednesday.

The Little Artists are two fine art graduates Darren Neave and John Cake, who are fixated with toys and cartoons, and have even developed animated characters based on themselves.

Their Lego sculptures also include models of Turner Prize-winner Chris Ofili, author Matthew Collings, gallery owner Jay Jopling and Julia Peyton-Jones, the Director of the Serpentine gallery.

They are among the hundreds of works on view at the art fair, which is taking place at the Islington's Business Design Centre in north London until Sunday.

Art buyers are expected to spend millions of pounds at the fair, with £12m of art sold at the 2002 event.

The Little Artists' collection is not the first time artists have created works from the children's building toys.

Michael Brakke, a professor at the University of Tennessee, uses Lego to build houses that express his ideas about memory and childhood.

Another artist, Eric Harshbarger, created Lego versions of famous characters including R2D2 and Alice in Wonderland, and has made a Lego version of the Mona Lisa using more than 30,000 pieces.