And so the Fruit Shop happened, the Over and Over group show happened, the second month-long Cultivate Columbia Road takeover happened, April happened, thanks to everyone who came along and made it happen, thanks ot everyone took part, hung art, viewed art, bought art, bought fruit, ate fruit, got fruity, looked through the window, came in through the open door. We’ll be back in the Shipton Street space in November. We like that ex-greengrocers shop of a gallery, we like the people who live on the estate there, we like the conversations, the interaction, we thought that space would be all about the flower market, and it is to some extent but mostly the space is about the people who live by it, the locals, the community, the real East London people (from all over the world) who live on that street, the estate and around the gallery. Thanks everyone, April was (mostly) a blast, we’ll be back there in Shipton Street in November, before that we have events coming up in Kings Cross, over in Hackney Wick and pne or two more potentially exciting places, expect announcements soon, we’re busy plotting, painting, debating, dealing with circles and piece of fruit and starz and wondering if all you need is love and building stalls and taking to various people about various exciting space and places and trips to the seaside and Seaside Treats and this Cultivation is a non-stop pro-active operation .

We are aware on the fact that new people are finding us all the time, we know that some people have been with us since day one, since the Harvist Gallery days, or the Organ days way before that, some are finding us this week and know nothing about us. Cultivate is an ever evolving platform, Cultivate evolved out of an one-off one-day East London market takeover by some 40 artists and performers lead by Sean Worrall and Emma Harvey, that was eight years ago this summer (I think it was eight, feels like a lifetime ago), Cultivate then landed in East London’s Vyner Street, a then thriving art-street with a worldwide reputation, we held nearly 150 shows throughout a never closed period of four years in a space smack bang in the middle of the street before the developers moved in and destroyed a unique community of galleries and spaces. Community and respect for the local community has always been very important to Cultivate. Since 2015 Cultivate has been nomadic, putting on group shows in conventional galleries all over London and beyond, in old shops such as that working Edwardian drapers shop in Hackney, or that old greengrocers shop by Columbia Road we were just talking about up there, we’ve put on shows under railway bridges, condemned warehouses (Play 2015, 53 artists and thousands of visitors over a stupidly busy weekend), we’ve done shows in car parks, we’ve done shows on-line, we’ve done things at the seaside, we went to Liverpool for the Biennial, we’ve done several things with the Fringe at the Folkstone Triennial, on the front at Margate, in Hastings, in a closed-down office complex in Hackney that we were able to grab for two weeks before it was redeveloped, at the Olympic Park in London, at Deptford X last year, over in Hackney Wick, in railway arches, we’ve been regular contributors to the Art Car Boot Fair, we’re at kings Cross in June this year, our seventh year at the highly respected fair as Cultivate, we’ve been rather busy for the last eight year or so, we;re not sure how long we’ll continue, we are planning more right now though, we’re working on things…

Play 2015

Cultivate is a flexible pro-active artist-led platform, lead by painters Sean Worrall and Emma Harvey, we have a loose collective of around 50 mostly London-based artists, film makers, performers, writers, broadcasters. We have a (now on-line) magazine called Organ, we work very closely with London arts radio station Resonance FM, we’ve been broadcasting shows on their beautifully unique radio station for years now Pro-active is very much the word with Cultivate exhibitions/events, pro-active maximalist welcoming art shows that reach out to include people, we’re very much about treating artists the right way, we;re very much about open doors and engagement. Artists come and go, some do one show with us, some do lots, some use us until they don’t need to, some come back, some never do, Cultivate has been and will be an ever evolving thing… watch this space…

51: SIG WALLER installation at Cultivate’s Play show, London Fields, 2015