Where were we? Do you miss us when we don’t blog? Busy painting, too busy painting to blog about painting, too busy running Cultivate to blog about running Cultivate, it is after all an artist run space. No expensively dressed coffee-drinking art sales people here, just us paint-covered artists doing it ourselves. Apparently that’s not the way it should be done…

What’s happening? Well right now one of our guest spaces in occupied by the prints of MICHELLE MILDENHALL and the other by the bold work of ROMEN GOUVEIA, more about Romen in a minute (that’s right, wait an age for one blog and then two three come along at once) .

The two guest spaces are due to evolve again on May 22nd and right now, we have no idea who will be occupying the space, who’s going to stimulate us enough to make us want to share space with them? Those who have been submitting work frankly haven;’t been exciting us, that or they just haven’t got it together enough (how difficult is it to answer a simple question like how big are those pieces in the j.pegs you submitted just then? What’s the medium? Who sends in a jpeg without actually telling us if they’re submitting a metre square photograph or a small oil painting anyway? Often difficult to tell when you submit a j.peg image without telling us anything about it, all that really tells us is that you haven’t got your act together and you’re not really to be taken seriously, especially when you have an e.mail hissy fit when we ask for details)

This month the wall is golden, the WALL OF GOLD is in place until the end of May. One wall full of paintings, pieces, prints (on slabs of concrete) of a yellow nature, a golden flavour, featuring the art of AMY DIGNAM, ANGELA BRUN, GLENN ‘FITZY’ FITZPATRICK, KATRINE STOREBO, LAURA FISHMAN, MADELEINE STRINDBERG, MATHEW TUDOR, NIKOLAI KOZIN, PHOEBIE DAVENPORT and SAMIA MALIK. The Wall of Gold follows last month’s Red wall and the month before when Emma Harvey curated a month-long wall for March in celebration of International Women’s Day.  Now frankly, even though the yellow nature of Cultivate is rather pleasing, and there’s some genuinely exciting art on the wall (wrong to pick things out, but rather pleased to have a Mathew Tudor painting on the wall, and really like the gold leaf work of Amy Dignam), we really didn’t want to be doing all this curating and such, we did enough of that in the first two years of Cultivate, it was supposed have evolved.  

What was the idea?

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The idea was (and hopefully still is) a committed group of pro-active excited (and hopefully exciting) artists working, sharing the space and presenting their art – that is what has been happening, and as expected (anticipated) we’ve had a couple of people drop out (health reasons in one case, an understandable need to escape art altogether on the other), we really don’t expect long long term commitment, just commitment for the time you’re part of it…  but where are you committed artists?  You’re forever moaning about galleries and greedy fees and outrageous commission, about spaces that don’t engage, so when we offer a viable alternative then where are you all?

The Guest space

We have two guest wall spaces at Cultivate Evolved, we invite artists to take up the guest spaces for two week periods, either with a body of work, a larger piece or… the space you get is 120cm x 290cm (with space on each side of the 120cm so you can take up that entire space), there are plinths available for small 3d pieces. For more details please e.mail info@cultivatevynerstreet.com and we shall send you full details in terms of how to submit potential work and such. Mark your e.mail “CULTIVATE GUEST WALL”

 Full-time member of Cultivate Evolved

We have an opening for a new full-time in-house artist at Cultivate Evolved. This involves you having a full time section of wall to exhibit your work as one of the eight permanent artists at the gallery, as well as being involved in other events we take part in as Cultivate. For full details please get in touch (you ideally need be London-based or willing to commute in, we all take turns looking after the space during opening hours, we’re talking three or four days a month each. You need to be a full time committed productive pro-active working artist who’s serious about what they’re doing…If you want to get involved then get in touch for more details.

Meanwhile, Alo, Art Car Boot Fair, things left behind, things rescued and…

Did we mention we were at the Brick Lane Art Car Boot fair again this year? The third time Cultivate has been invited to partake? I’m busy painting a new One Hundred Pieced Piece to follow up last year’s One Hundred Pieced Cardboard Piece.  This year the piece consists of one hundred pieces of used vinyl – old unwanted (or unplayable) 12″ vinyl records all being painted in time for the Art Car Boot Fair.  Meanwhile Julia Maddison is busy make a new set of handmade prints, Quiet British Accent have some ice cream flavoured eyeballs, MOB is leaving the country and, well, watch this space, we’ll have more in a bit (didn’t I just say, “wait an age for one blog and then two three come along at once”?), more about Julia’s Used Boots and Panties as well… .

Put this lighthearted photo up on my personal Facebook the other day, and people have been asking me about that Alo piece (amongst other things) ever since…

What is that big Alo piece doing there? Several of you have asked me about it or asked if I want to sell it. That piece was on a big board (about 120cm square), the board was part of a wooden wall surrounding a building site in East London, it was up for a good couple of month or more, I’d walk past it most days, one way we noticed it and most of the temporary wooden wall gone, that’s how it works with these temporary things… then we noticed workers breaking up the bits of wooden “wall” and throwing the bits in skip, the Alo piece was just about to be smashed up when we stopped them. After some discussion, I ended up buying it (£20), seemed wrong to just let them destroy it. And so it has been sitting here ever since, I’ve told Alo several times I’ve got it, he doesn’t seem that bothered (been telling him I’ve got it for about five months now). I have no space for it, and so next week it will go on display at Cultivate and at the same tine go on-line at Ebay.. 50% of the sale will go to the artist and 50% to help keep Cultivate flowing… Last big Alo piece we sold at Cultivate went for £400 (that’s the price he stuck on it and the price someone was happy to pay). Opening bid on ebay will be 1p.

In fact we’re going to have a sale of all the uncollected art that artists have left at Cultivate and such that’s cluttering up my studio and our lives, gone on (and on) about it for too long now, time for a clear out. if you’ve left art with us for over two months and we’ve not communicated about it in the last thirty days then we shall consider the art abandoned and unwanted (that includes prints and such left in the rack), and ours to do what the hell we want with  All abandoned art will be put on sale on a make me an offer basis

And what happened with all that planning permission stuff? Well we don ‘t know, we got ego-fulled me me me urbanisters on one side taking over everything, we got developers fighting over who gets to pull down what and build flats where…. all we know is for, we’re still on our corner flying our pirate flag and doing it our way…. watch this space….