A week ago yesterday I was making the long trip back home, driving from central London back to Killarney, after a weekend spent at the Untitled Artists Fair on King’s Road in Chelsea…
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| Chelsea Old Town Hall, King’s Road |
The building and the location were fantastic, right in the middle of Chelsea… The setting up was a little less ideal however… With no allocated car park for the exhibitors, I was forced to find a small car park elsewhere and carry my stuff accross a very busy road 3-4 times with my trolley… Phew!
After setting up on Friday morning, I had a few hours to kill before the opening at 5.30, so I had a little wonder around Covent Gardens, an area I like a lot in London, (I was tempted by Portobello but had been there on my previous trip to London! )
The city was all prepared for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee…
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| The Apple Market, Covent Gardens |
Friday night came and the opening was quite busy, but no luck for me on the night… In fact, not much more luck for the whole weekend unfortunately…! I managed to sell a few prints, but that was it unfortunately… Perhaps the jubilee events were taking away from the fair, or there was insufficient advertising..? Who knows… I was disapointed with the organiser of the event who never came around to see how we were doing or just to introduce himself in general, which I thought was a little rude..
On the bright side, the highlight of my weekend was definitely getting to meet some of my fellow exhibitors, I would love to introduce you to a few of them..
In the booth right next to mine was Graham Holland, he was a great neighbour to have and we got on like house on fire instantly. We had great laughs together. A londoner himself, Graham creates fantastic photo montages of London and different other cities in the world…
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| © Graham Holland |
In front of me was the lovely Catherine Savigny, french painter and sculptor who had come all the way from Paris, handy I suppose with the Eurostar, I would love to do this trip one day..!
Dan Hillier was around the corner from me, a super nice guy who’s art I really liked: he takes old victorian illustrations and manipulates them to create new images entirely. Dan did pretty well at the fair, he was the only one who did that I’m aware of…
I fell in love with Rachel Jeffery’s paintings… Living in Cornwall, she gets her inspiration from rock pools… Being a beach comber myself I was really attracted by the colours and the textures in her work…!
There was so many others… but a lovely surprise for me was to meet Bridget Skanski Such… Meeting Bridget and seeing her work felt like we must have been connected somehow somewhere, and you’ll understand why when you see her textile art…:
Bridget and I use similar colours and shapes, but her work is made entirely of textiles… Ribbons, pieces of organza, and lovely intricate embroidery stitches…
I also met my twitter friend Dean Philips who makes sculptures out of… Blu-Tack..! Dean wasn’t exhibiting, he just came up to say hello since he lives in London… My first time meeting an online friend.
So, that was my weekend in a nutshell… Would I do it again..? Not this fair in particular, no. Talking to the other exhibitors from the UK was great to learn about other fairs… I think I would fly over though, with smaller unframed pieces in a big suitcase..!
So, I leave you now with some random London pics…:
