From a Bacon on a bus to a Hockney on your hackney, the world's largest art show has been launched – not at an esteemed gallery, but at a shopping centre.

The pop art master Sir Peter Blake unveiled a giant digital version of his work The Meeting or Have a Nice Day, Mr Hockney at west London's Westfield centre, the first of 22,000 advertising sites across the UK that, from Monday and for the next fortnight, will feature 57 popular works of art.

Alongside him, Cornelia Parker, whose Cold Dark Matter was voted the 10th most popular work by online voters on the Art Everywhere website, rejoiced in being not only the only living artist in the top 10, but the only woman to boot.

Since Toulouse Lautrec in 19th century Paris was commissioned by the Moulin Rouge to design posters promoting the bohemian nightclub, advertising has turned to great art to promote products.

Now advertisers are repaying – to the tune of more than £3m – by donating printed poster sites and digital screens across the UK to celebrate art for art's sake.

The Art Everywhere project – organised by Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent drinks, but the brainchild of his wife, Melinda – will see artworks on billboards, bus stops, major roads, tube, train and metro stations, shopping malls and office buildings, among other sites. Some 2,000 London buses and 1,000 black cabs will transport the artworks around London.

Smartphone users can download an app via Blippar enabling them to point their phones at a digital display and access information about each piece.

Blake, best known for co-creating the sleeve design for the Beatles' Sgt Pepper Lonely Hearts Club album, and who features twice in the top 57, modestly attributed the honour of launching the art show to "I'm local and I'm living".

Leaning on his walking stick beneath the giant 12-by-4.5-metre version of The Meeting, painted about 30 years ago, in which he depicts himself with a stick, he said: "The stick was a prop then, but it's real now."

The project was "a terrific idea", he said later. "Almost 60 years ago with the stirrings of pop art, and what became my branch of pop art, was the idea art should be available to everybody. All these years later, maybe this is the fruition of what I attempted to do."

Parker, also one of the few chosen artists who is alive, said: "It is just lovely to be up there, along with Bacon, and Freud – who is only very recently dead, of course.

"I'm thrilled to be in the top 10, and to be the only woman."

The public curated the exhibition by selecting their shortlist from a long list drawn up in consultation with the Tate and the Art Fund, and donated online to help pay for costs in what Reed referred to as "the biggest ever crowdsourced funding for a charity in the UK".

It was, he said, "a joyful project with no agenda other than to flood our streets with art and celebrate the creative talents and legacy of the UK".

The most generous donors were rewarded with a limited edition artwork by Bob and Roberta Smith. The public's top choice was The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, inspired by the Alfred Tennyson poem.

Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said the works ranged from the 16th century to modern day. "I've been involved in a few exhibitions in my time, but I have never launched one at a shopping centre before," he said.

Those supporting the project include Damien Hirst, who said: "Art is for everyone, and everyone who has access to it will benefit from it. This project is amazing and gives the public a voice and an opportunity to choose what they want to see on their streets."

All the artists chosen for the longlist were British, or, as in the case of German-born Hans Holbein the Younger (voted 19th for The Ambassadors), adopted British. British art was defined as by any artist who made the work in the UK and on UK public display.

The Top Ten chosen by the public

1. The Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse

2. Ophelia by John Everett Millais

3. Head VI by Francis Bacon

4. Gassed by John Singer Sargent

5. Man's Head (Self Portrait) by Lucian Freud

6. The Fighting Temeraire by JMW Turner

7. Five Ships – Mount's Bay by Alfred Wallis

8. Going to the Match by LS Lowry

9. Nocturne: Blue and Gold – Battersea Bridge by James Whistler

10. Cold Dark Matter by Cornelia Parker.

• The full list of the 57 selected works can be found at arteverywhere.org.uk. Prints of the chosen works can be bought through the sites via Easyart, with profits going to the artists and Art Everywhere. A 24-page guide to Art Everywhere is available free with the Guardian on Saturday.

• This article was amended on 8 August 2013. The headline was changed to make clear that the project is taking place across the UK, and not only in London.