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The Spring Bounce is the latest event from the thing that is the ever evolving ever rewarding Art Car Boor Fair. The fair has now been running in one for or another for a year short of twenty, that’s if we’ve counted it right. So far this year there’s been a number of quick online pop up flash happenings (or whatever you wish to call them). The Spring Bounce is something a little bit bigger,  nor quite as big as previous online events, the first of which happened when the pandemic forced the organisers to call off that year’s great big annual outdoor fair. big all the same though, something like 50 artists invited to take part in the week-long online event (we’ve had a look behind the scenes already, there’s some exciting art waiting to be explored)   

The Art Car Boot Fair is traditionally an outdoor event, it returned to London’s Kings Cross last summer after the enforced Pandemic break, we hear it should be back again later this Summer in physical form although nothing official has been announced yet (the Art Car Boot Fair team do like to keep things under their hats, you never quite know, all you really know is that you can never really take them for granted). While we hopefully wait for news of the big outdoor event and all the noise, fun, engagement, performance, meeting, talking, people watching and of course art buying and selling that goes on with those big outdoor London Art Car Boot Fair affairs (they really are worth going to even if you don’t want to buy art). We’re told that, after a number of short sharp pop ups featuring just a handful of artists, the Art Car Boot Fair year is kicking of properly this Friday with what they call a Spring Bounce. The carefully curated event Features 50 or so invited artists, some Fair regulars, some new names, lots of new work, all at car boot Fair prices rather than gallery prices, something for almost all pockets…

The online Spring Bounce will open to all at 8am UK time this Friday 19th May and run until May 28th. This time entry is free to all from the very start, no buying a ticket to get the first picks, you just have to be an early bird, although I imagine as the week-long event evolves , we participating artists will be adding new art so do keep checking back. The event is open to everyone from the kick off, just head for their website and explore.

One word of caution if you’re looking to buy something though, quite often a piece of art will be marked as sold when really it is just in someone else’s virtual shopping basket, do keep checking if you see something marked as sold that you really like, quite often it will reappear again half an hour later when the buyer has decided he or she doesn’t want what they have in their basket, if it is marked as sold, check band later, it might still be on sale (as someone once said, “Keep looking!”)  

And yes, I should declare my own interest here, I am once again one of the invited participating artists, I am blowing my own trumpet again here, I would ber sating all this if I wasn’t taking part though, I was a fan of the fair long before I first took part a dozen years ago. The Art Car Boot Fair is a rare thing, a genuinely artist-friendly event. It is carefully currated by founder Karen Ashton and her team, I have said thing before, but it is worth repeating. The Art Car Boot Fair , all we as being rather unique in itself, is rather unique in terms of the way we artists are treated and you really should know how these things work, it is important to repeat it onthe eve of this Spring Bounce

Most art fairs will charge us artists an absolute fortune to take part, we’re asked to pay stupidly big fees to participate, quite often there’s all kinds of extras, want to plug in a light? Sure, that’ll be an extra fifty quid! On top of the fees (we’re talking thousands of pounds most of the time!) on top of all the up front fees and the extras, there is often a hefty commission on any sales, all these fairs that claim to be artist friendly, that Other one, that Affordable one that is never ever that affordable in terms of us artists, they hardly ever are artist-friendly they almost always see us, the artists, as their cash cows, they exploit us rather than work with us and really there is never any curation, they pretty much accept anyone willing to pay. I am right to say it is pretty much exploitation and you really have to have deep pockets to take the risk in terms of taking part. The Art Car Boot Fair doesn’t charge us artists a thing, they never have done, they’ve always been artist-friendly, they are artist-led, it is unique in terms of big art fairs in more that just the obvious way. For this Spring Bounce they are taking a more than fair and reasonable 20% on sales, that really more than reasonable when you consider all the work they put in behind the scenes (most galleries will take far far more). At the physical events they don’t take a thing, the door price is how they live or die. I tell you all this because you should know that when you buy from an artist at the Art Car Boot Fair you really are supporting us artists directly and those of us who are invited are more than happy with the way the Art Car Boot Fair do things (those who aren’t invited might get a little frustrated, it is tough getting out there as an artist, getting tougher all the time)

Anyway, the Spring Bounce is upon us, the Art Car Boot Fair’s year is properly kicking off, there is a (loose) theme, Flora and Fauna, you will find lots of flowers, a dog, maybe a parrot, leaves…

Find it all at Art Car Boot Fair

Here’s a flavour or two, not a best of, quite a few of the artists are still uploading their art, expect morecoverage as tw week evolves…         

Do click on am image to see the whole thing or torun the slide show