Busy not missing Vyner Street last Saturday

So where were we before I was so rudely interrupted? Are the five minutes over yet? “Are you missing it yet?” she asked. Well for the first post-Vyner Street weekend I was busy down underground in that car park in Cavendish Square, busy installing work… well not that busy, it didn’t take too long, I was only installing mine, for once I didn’t need to worry about everyone else, about people being late because their dog had eaten their painting or the bus was the wrong colour or any of the other reasons people regularly come up with for nor being able to make it on installation day . My first weekend off in over three years, did I miss Vyner Street? Hell no! Didn’t miss it one little bit, we loved it, time was up though, like we already said, we were tired of Vyner Street and Vyner Street tired of us.  I spent a glorious Saturday in a deck chair not missing a thing…. The car park was an exciting week, it was, as Martin Sexton put it, “a genuine feeling of esprit de corps or morale amongst us”. I wrote about the car park and We Could Not Agree over on the Organ pages (I write far more over on the Organ pages than I do here on this Cultivate page). We Could Not Agree was exciting, would have been good to have been able to get a few of the Cultivate family of artists in there, felt a little bad about others not being there, like I had abandoned them or something. The car park was exciting, it kept me well away from any kind of notion of missing anything, here’s the video Marina made when we got home after the opening night…

Grace Aza-Selinger  – catch her on the corner down Vyner Street…

I haven’t missed Vyner Street one bit, I haven’t been there since we vacated the corner, I wish the new occupants well, they’re doing things a slightly different way, we wish them every success as the skate around their freshly painted floor, looks like they have some interesting paintings on those ragged walls. All looks a little formal and not sure about the name they’ve chosen but hey, what’s a name got to do with anything  Have a brilliant time showing your art on that special corner.  Vyner Street has problems right now, too many people lining up to kick at it, Vyner Street is special, it needs saving, it needs celebrating, it needs rescuing from the properly developers and those who masquerade as friends of the street while they plot destructive developments and close spaces down. Enough of that, go treasure the street and the corner while you can, go explore Street Corner Gallery (as the space is now called), they’re open now, they have a first late night on November First Thursday, they’re a collective of artists doing themselves, we’re pleased to see them doing it. Grace Aza Selinger is one of the artists involved in the street corner collective, that’s one of her acrylic on canvas pieces up there, go find out more down Vyner Street..

Have we missed it? Starting to get that itch, not missing the street, starting to miss the buzz of organising a show, selecting artists, preparing my own work, throwing ideas at Emma and watching her duck before she throws one back at me.  Started work on one or two things that we’ll keep to ourselves for now, started investigating spaces we like, been out of the loop in terms of finding places for shows for the last three years. Gawd, you people who own or control the art spaces have grown even more greedy in terms of the ridiculously outrageous sums you are demanding in terms of rent. Outrageous demands in terms of rent was one of the factors that drove us to take on our own space in the first place, the monthly rent bill on our space was less than what the gallery over the street was asking for just one week. We had (stupidly) expected a bit of reality might have hit home since we last checked things out three years ago, I mean these East London galleries that only ever open when someone shells out the money to hire them aren’t open now as much as they once were are they? So started checking out spaces, rather like the Hoxton Arch, saw them posting away on social media, the amount of posting they were doing suggested an almost desperate need to have someone hire their space, dropped them an e.mail, outrageous reply, three thousand for five days, VAT on top of that, ridiculous reply! Annoyed me so much, I took to social media myself. Provoked an interesting response that demanded a  defending of galleries. The exchange is down there, I expect it is still going on on Social media…

So anyway, are we missing it? Starting to.  Watch this space…..  (SW)

Galleries -wonderful places….

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Meanwhile on social media…..