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.

Ai Weiwei Circle of Animals.

I got to see Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals Zodiac Heads, his new sculptural installation at Somerset House, last week.
It is an installation of 12 bronze sculptures of animal heads, the animals being the traditional animals of the Chinese Zodiac including, dragon, horse, monkey and rabbit. Ai Weiwei based his sculptures on traditional Chinese designs and they are quite striking in the courtyard of Somerset House.


It is a political shame that Ai Weiwei has been arrested and is in custody in China now, for apparent tax evasion. He has been an outspoken critic of China's regime for many years, it is testimony to the power of the arts I suppose that artists like Ai Weiwei are targeted by their country in an attempt to silence their views.
I hope international pressure is brought to bear more and more strongly on the Chinese for the release of Ai Weiwei.



The regular fountains are on again for the summer, with their sequence of rising and falling jets, I couldn't quite make up my mind whether they enhanced or detracted from the installation. I did enjoy taking a few photos of them through the water though.

E17 Designers Market this week.

I have been busy getting work ready for the E17 Designers market on this Friday at the Asian Centre, 18a Orford road, E17 9LN May 13th 7-10pm. link to site and more info here The craft markets have a really good range of products and do showcase what skilled designers we have in the area. There is also live music, wine and soft drinks and goody bags to be won, so a good evening out if you can make it
E17 Designers has a new website with more information about the designers here
I am taking my new individual collages as cards, I'm enjoying collecting all the material and making up the compositions, though the sorting of material for easy use is a bit daunting.


I'm also working on some larger collages as well, some of which will have more political comment in them
Part of my interest in collage has come from the political Agit Prop work from the 1930's onwards.
Today artist Peter Kennard carries on the tradition. Good article here about his work and his own website here.
Photographers working with a collage element also interest me, such as the recent work by John Stezaker at the Whitechapel gallery link to his work here. I have started a few photographic collage pieces over the years but haven't made up a body of work with them yet. I like both the digital and more hand made aspects of collage but my photoshop skills are not great at the moment.

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