Free Art Fair

Here are some brilliant pictures of the final day by Ella Bryant. She is a photographer and free art fair volunteer. It was a successful day and I can report that at the free art fair 100% of work went to collectors.

Here is the lovely little book designed by Paulus Dreibholz and team. 2000 of them went at the fair, so here is the pdf if you want to read it. http://freeartfair.com/download/faf_catalogue_08.pdf

Phew. Sorry if you’ve been trying to see the website, it’s been down all day because we had too many hits because the free art fair was the lead picture story on the bbc news site! It is a good problem to have in a way, but has taken most of the day to fix.
Anyway, the give-away was brilliant. More than a hundred people queued, many overnight. Matthew Collings’ picture was the first piece to go, and the people who got work seemed really happy when they got it. Below are a few links to coverage, and please post your stories here as well. It was live on BBC News throughout the day, and on ITV London Tonight, the BBC World Service and Radio 5. I will be posting pictures, video etc soon and the pdf of the catalogue wil be put up for you to download. I am interested in how you think The Free Art Fair should develop, also criticisms, praise, and all other ideas! Thank you all the artists, helpers, queuers, and others who made it great. JJ

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7680731.stm

http://www.itnsource.com/shotlist//ITN/2008/10/19/T19100835/

http://www.itvlocal.com/london/news/?player=LON_News_15&void=247759 about 9 mins 20 secs in

Daniel Lehan “Free Art”

Round the block. The fair has been on BBC Radio 5 live, and will appear on ITV London Tonight at 6pm and BBC News 24 throughout the day.

Some lovely people are in their sleeping bags and duvets. They really love art and are willing to wait to get what they want.

Lots of interesting press coverage which you can see in Press. Everyone seems to enjoy becoming a Gavin Turk fruit. Do we all yearn to be commodities? JJ

So we’re open and so far so good. We have about 2000 copies of The Free Art Fair handbook to give away while the show is open, and of course on Sunday all the art will go to some lucky people. I think the show looks great and thank you to all the artists and people who have helped/are helping. Here’s Harry and Harry at the opening party. JJ

We’re looking set fair for Monday, just have to hang 40 artists, which should be fun.  James Jessop is showing “Strange” 243cm X 485cm. This is one you won’t be able to take home on the tube, or bus. We haven’t published pictures of the other artists’ works because we want you to come see them in reality. But here’s a sneak peak of James’ whopper.