Art Car Boot Fair

The annual Art Car Boot fair, info here was held off Brick Lane again on the 19th June. I always enjoy the mix of stalls and sense of a little bit of anarchy in the event. In the end Peter Blake couldn't make it apparently, but Gavin Turk, Billy Childish, Pam Hogg and taxidermist Polly Morgan, (whose tiny quail chicks on toothbrushes were in the news), were some of the artists there.

There were ques all day for the limited edition prints by more well known artists like Damien Hurst and Tracey Emin, but even at £200 were too expensive for my pocket. I bought a small sketch book with printed cover and a surprise art work (in this case a drawing on one of the pages) which I liked the idea of, by Tangent projects.website here I found some retro badges I liked and a tombola where for £1 a ticket you won photographs from The Outsideworld gallery site here

Penguin Books were selling their design your own cover books and I bought a few before a real short thundery downpour fell on us all. Now I just need the time and inspiration to design the covers. Again an idea I really liked, there are only a few titles but you can buy them from here
I suppose you could also just cover or take off the cover of any book and re-design it too.



Performance artist Jessica Voorsanger had a Star Trek inspired stall full of Tribbles, I'm not sure if she was selling many Tribbles but I appreciated her fun idea. I also liked the idea of an improvement clinic, a stall where you could take your art work to be improved.



With a free art work from You Must Undo, a printed poster with the words"good for nothing" I had my sort of bargain day out.

Chelsea Flower Show

Last weekend was the Chelsea Flower Show, I always enjoy being surrounded by the gardens and plants. This year a lot of the gardens had a very subdued palette of colours, which wasn't helped by it being the coldest Chelsea that I've been to for some years. There had been some sunny days in the week, but on Saturday when I went the weather had turned cool and showery.


Diarmuid Gavin's pink pod flying garden (Irish Sky Garden)had been profiled in the media all week, and it was certainly rather surreal. Some visitors were having a go in the pod, with as it was hoisted into the air by a huge crane. Of course it was the crane that made it all rather unrealistic for any type of garden, but as a bit of fun it worked.

The goldfish swimming in a large glass table also qualified as rather strange or surreal in the B&Q garden. The garden also had vertical planters showing how to grow food in a small space, and a wall with all sorts of spaces and homes for insects.

I liked the Magistrates Garden, with it's bench,the word bench carved into it, structural London Plane trees and a lovely, well planted vertical green wall.

The marquee was full of great stands of plants, trees and flowers, and is always a pleasure to look round. I love the mix of perfume on the air, even though I seem to have hayfever over the last few years. One of the most amazing stands was a Thai temple and elephants, woven with flowers, from the Thai Botanical Gardens. It stood out with it's amazing colours of pink, red, blue/green and yellow.