RE-UP will be a spontaneous group show, a one week replenishment… ,and one more FIRST THURSDAY….

Time for a re-up, a re-think, a slice of spontaneous  combustion or at least a slice of crash and burn, some attitude, some spontaneity before the walls finally crash in on us! Come on, tale a jump outside your nice little well-hung safety zone while we’re still here, a hint or two of danger thrown on the bonfire that should be the stale art-school sanitised order,  the art-fair sell sell sell desperation and the please vote for me on Charlie’s website hopelessness of London, please please vote for me via Saaaatchi on-line, I desperately need a career in art retail.

Re-Up: One last call to arms for you artists then, one last stand on our corner. before we shut up (shut our mouths up that is….)

Julia Maddison

My two favourite visitors to Cultivate last weekend were a self confessed “art dealer and collector” from China, who arrived in a plush car and stayed for ages chatting about art, the artists on our walls and London art in general, about how boring show found Frieze and all the art fairs and who unexciting the far-too-polite West End galleries were. She has come to see the Derek Jarman exhibition down the street at the Wilkinson gallery, she couldn’t find it of course, no one ever can what with their closed black doors and their unfriendly lack of signs, or indeed any information or indication that their great big (beautiful) white cube of a gallery space might be there,  I reckon we at Cultivate, on our friendly corner helping people, must be responsible for at least half the footfall at the hidden gallery down the street (great show, well worth going to see). So anyway, Chinese lady said she loved our organicness,  our attitude and our energy, “I love your beautiful mess, it feels so real”, she explained that this is what she had been expecting to find in London and how relieved she was to find a little bit of it, how she thought London was just full of art showrooma and sales people and how art in London was just a business (don’t got up the road to the soul-suckers at Degree Art I thought to myself, you’ll be slitting your wrists in their salesroom for sure!). We has a great time talking before she went off to Wilkinson, she b ack before she left and thanked me profusely before driving off in a yelp of delighted smiles and waves. I didn’t disagree with anything she said, well beside the fact that there are other places like Cultivate if you go really look for yourself.. There;s some great art and good people running great spaces if you go look, te art media won’t tell you, you  have to do search, you won’t find it at establishment art fairs or in the Nettie Horns of this world…

The second was a regular visitor who’s name I confess I don’t know,. that’s bad of me – said man apologised for having not been in for a few weeks and told me how he loves coming in Cultivate, how he never likes everything we have on the walls but there is always something or someone new that excites him and how he never knows what to expect. I liked that, I liked it far more than the woman who told me the other day that she didn’t need to come in, she came to a show last year and knew what kind of thing we did and it wasn’t her thing..

Sean – sold and leaving the building…

Not that we’re adverse to a sale or two, no, we do like selling art,  got to live, or at least pay the rent while juggle with the other bills, sales are great, indeed we were delighted to sell several of the larger pieces we had on the walls for Gareth Morgan’s solo show last week, sold to a very enthusiastic collector over from San Francisco and out exploring Vyner Street on a Saturday morning (as well as another piece we sold to a guy who had been in with his girlfriend the day before and who came back in to buy a piece for her as a marriage proposal gift – no pressure on Gareth’s art there then! Wonder if she said yes?). Yes, we like to sell art, just that that selling, as skint and in debt as we are, isn’t the be-all and end all, and you won’t catch us turning our art space in to nothing more than showrooms and treating our art and artists as little mote than used car shaped commission making artgimps…   If art is just about sales and money then we ain’t the place or people for you, I’d rather have the holes in my last pair of shoes fank you very much! .

And another thing, VOTE FOR ME PLEASE

Agata… an artist who matters to us…

How many more of you so called “artists” who never ever have anything to say to me or anyone else on any other Facebook day of the week and who are suddenly my best on-line friend ever just because you want a tick in an on-line box, how many more of you are going to spam me today asking me to vote for your “art” in some bullpoop Saaaaatchi on-line look-at-me-and-all-my-votes-I’ve-got-more-friends-than-you competition that’s about anything but your art!  All you[re doing is whoring your creativity while he laughs at you driving up his on-line traffic stats so his marketing team can boast about how busy his website is and his people can tell everyone in art-media land how important and influential he is! And if you do “win” it will say jack-shit about your art, it will only be because you mum voted for you 72 times, no one ever votes for the art, they just vote for their “friends” everyone knows that! Wise up for flip-sake, on-line votes are not what your art should be about, spamming everyone with vote for me links is not what art is about! What are you all doing for god sake?  Whatever happened to art in this country!? The “unfriend” button is up there, you’ll find it quicker than the time spent asking me to vote for you.  If you’re trying to “build a career” or get your art “out there” then these things really are a kiss of death, Charlie ain’t coming around to your house waving a cheque any day soon, he’s laughing at you, and so is everyone else, wise up!

Right then, the RE-UP, we’ll be standing on our corner….. one more  time….

RE-UP – a spontaneous group show, an eight-day replenishment…

RE-UP on our corner… The RE-UP will happen on our corner of Vyner Street this week. A one week art re-up, a one week replenishment running until First Thursday evening. A one week replenishing of our walls featuring…. Well, watch this space, we like things to be a little more spontaneous at Cultivate, time to re-up the cultivation, we’ve all got a little too blasé about life down the street, we’ll miss it when it finally goes… treasure your street.

RE-UP opens on Thursday October 31st, there will be no late evening view (private or otherwise) on the first day, the late evening will be the last night of Re-Up on First Thursday November 7th.

Usual gallery opening times, 11.30am until 6pm Thursday to Sunday, or by appointment Monday to Wednesday.

RE-UP will be a spontaneous group show, a one week replenishment…and one more FIRST THURSDAY….

Artists who wish to get involved in this last-minute slice of attitude laden replenishing should quickly get in touch via info@cultivatevynerstreet.com – this may just be the last time we do it on this particular corner unless….

Cultivate, September First Thursday, 2013