What:
This September Liverpool will play host to CAVE – a new and unique model of art fair.

Housed in Baltic Creative’s new Campus building, CAVE will give visitors the opportunity to discover the work of 45 of the UK’s most dynamic and currently unrepresented artists, offering the opportunity to buy work at a price to suit any budget. What makes CAVE unique is its focus on the artist with the organisers taking no commission or exhibition fees; the full sale price of each art work will go directly to the artist.

Y Morals by James McLardy

Coinciding with the opening of the Liverpool Biennial 2012, CAVE will run from 13 – 16 September, existing independently of but alongside the festival. CAVE aims to give emerging artists an ambitious sales & exhibition platform and the opportunity to engage with wide audiences. Playing on it’s independent position; CAVE is exhibiting some of the most exciting art being produced in the UK today. Painting, drawing, sculpture and film will exist alongside performative encounters, secret talks and urban shamanic rituals.

Oliver Braid

CAVE, the brainchild of Flis Mitchell and Kevin Hunt (artists and curators based at The Royal Standard in Liverpool) was born out of a desire to create a commercial platform for emerging and unrepresented artists during the Biennial, something that has never happened before. CAVE supports the very best creative talent the UK has to offer, removes gallery mediation, and creates a dialogue directly between the artist and the buyer; stimulating the local and wider regional art markets within the UK.

Tom Nolan

Flis explained “We feel that the time is right for something different, an ambitious and exciting commercial addition at the time of the festival.”

Kevin added “People will be able to buy something bespoke, hand-made and original, for less than many factory-produced blips consumed on the high street, engaging directly, with the artists who made the work.”

When:
CAVE Art Fair runs from 13 – 16 September 2012 at Baltic Creative Campus, Liverpool.

Find out more:
Website | Facebook | Twitter

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We came across FAIR recently and thought it deserved a bit of attention. FAIR brings together post graduate students from a number of institutions for an art fair with a difference…

What’s ‘FAIR’?:

‘FAIR’ is unique. There is no other art fair anywhere in the world that exclusively exhibits the work of students; students are excluded from participating in such events by virtue of being students. Additionally, students are prohibited from applying for public grants that would enable them to initiate such a project, leaving art fairs at the behest of an established network of art fund investors, collectors and dealers. To break this monopoly, it makes sense for students to establish a community of purpose and build their own fair on their own terms. We hope that this pilot will establish the parameters for future occurrences of ‘FAIR’, both in Edinburgh and in the home towns of our guests. This is the first and only art fair for art students by art students, but hopefully, will be the first of many.

Who’s ‘FAIR’?

The programme of ‘FAIR’ is user-generated, it will emerge from the interests and desires of its participants which, for this pilot event, are postgraduate art students from Edinburgh and their guests from the Royal College of Art, Sheffield Hallam and Sint-Lucas Beeldende Kunst in Ghent. Participants will produce and install their own work in Edinburgh College of Art’s magnificent Sculpture Court. The work-in-progress will be visible to the public. As a means of hosting their guests, masters students Edinburgh’s School of Art have designed an accompanying public programme to run over four days.

FAIR opens Friday 24 February, from 7pm.

Find out more about FAIR here.

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For more creative delights we’ve Spotted on the web take a look here.

We think we had about 150 Visitors over the weekend and we had good sales and a few commissions. It has been lovely meeting so many interesting people, those on the Art Trail, people who just spotted the sign and my friends who are always great at supporting any events I put on. We even had visitors from America and Italy.

Great fun, but a lot of work turning my dining room into a shop in a couple of days. It did look fab but the rest of my house was just stuffed with furniture and things. My children have done reasonably well in coping too. It was certainly less stressful with them all out at School on the Friday. But that is reality and I like that. Especially their welcoming KEEP OUT signs on their bedroom doors. Thank goodness to friends who have taken them out for a few hours just to break up the day.

I think the easy part is making the stock for an event and hard part is pricing, packing, traveling, carrying and building your shop, (You should try Parking on Lothian Road!!). The loveliest part is meeting people, sales and orders (this gives you a fantastic buzz and makes up for much time spent on your own across the year) but the worst part is taking down, carrying and packing away. Packing the car then unpacking again when you get home – oh yes and the paperwork. So muscles are obligatory and so is a degree in finding every inch of space in packing a car. I have only done a few events this year but some people are out selling every weekend and making all week. I am lucky enough to work in textiles and not glass or pottery where more precision packing is required. I even met a lady who was sleeping in her Arch for the three weeks within the venue – a Graveyard. It certainly isn’t glamorous or an easy life.

So what will I be doing for the rest of this year…?  I have some orders and commissions to work on and a few local craft events. I also have the dreaded paperwork to do and need to prepare myself for The Scottish Trade Fair in Glasgow at the end of January. My new twisty scarves need a name and I think a new style of bag and corsage is required too. Grace and I are planning to run our first workshop together. Hopefully we will put this on just before Christmas. So if you fancy a go at printing and sewing a small gift for Christmas, just let me know……….!

I will leave you with a comment from a visitor over the weekend. “Is this shop always open?” and when I explained it was just for the weekend she then asked if it was “by appointment only the rest of the year”.  So feeling very exclusive now and loved the little shop but I am afraid it is all back to normal now.