Regular visitors to a North-East gallery could be forgiven for doing a cartoon-style "double take" as they cross the threshold.
For the normally august Hatton Gallery, at Newcastle University, has undergone a crazy comic re-hang, with paintings displayed higgledy piggledy and even upside down.
And whereas most exhibitions involve pictures hung on walls, in this case much of the artwork has been painted directly on to the walls themselves - with skeletons cavorting among the ornate frames.
It is the latest stage in a project called Strange Cargo masterminded by Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio who style themselves the Kartoon Kings.
Simon, who is British, and Christopher, an American, were commissioned by the Hatton - with a £57,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund - to produce 30,000 comic book guides to the gallery's collection of 3,000 paintings and artefacts. The comic books, entitled Strange Cargo, tell true stories relating to the Hatton as told to Simon Grennan by a range of North-East people.
The stories, such as Picture Riot by Laura and Jim, who used to work in a North-East tattoo parlour but are now touring Australia, were then reproduced in comic book style by the Kartoon Kings working with local schoolchildren.
Now comes the exhibition, with the cartoon figures in the book painted on to the gallery walls by Simon's team and providing a whacky backdrop to some of the Hatton's venerable pictures.
"The book is called Strange Cargo because the collection of stories in the book is driven by serendipity," said Simon.
"The Hatton Gallery's collection has grown up in so many different ways since 1925 and the pictures have inspired so many different stories."
Karen Chapman, the Hatton's exhibitions officer, said the idea of the exhibition, and of the comic book it is based on, was to encourage young people to think of art and art galleries not as stuffy and intimidating but as somewhere to be inspired and, above all, have fun.
Movie double-acts come in all shapes and sizes ...and with varying degrees of success.
Click here