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Art Car Boot Fair Goes Pop! The date for this year’s much anticipated Art Car Boot Fair has now been announced on the official website. The fair has been branching out in recent years, on line events, pop ups and special releases via the website, and yes, there has always been events outside of the capital city, events at the seaside, that time in the forest, up at the Liverpool Biennial, Hastings, Folkestone, Margate, appearances at festivals and such but it has really always been about the main event that is the annual Summer Art Car Boot Fair here in London. It has always been about the live event, the Summer art party, the dancing in a car park, the people-watching, the music and of course the art, and of course it is about the cast list of artists, the interaction, the hair let down and the car boot fair prices you get just for that day.  

This year the Art Car Boot Fair will happen in terms of a live event on Saturday September 16th, it will once again happen in London at Lewis Cubitt Square, Kings Cross and this year the theme is Pop.

Tickets have gone on sale today and we anticipate an announcement in terms of the artist line up in the next few days (we’re expecting the usual suspects along with a new name or two, there’s always an interesting new artist or two)

And yes, London may be the spiritual home of the fair (some would say East London is), the fair has become a global affair since the pandemic forced it all on line in 2020, could it be argued that it was one of the very few good things that came out of the whole Covid mess was the Fair going on line and reaching out beyond the city?  The big Art Car Boot Fair online events have seen collectors from all over the globe interacting directly with the participating artists and once again, as well as being live in Kings Cross in September, Art Car Boot Fair Goes Pop will also open on line on September 16th and run until Midnight on September 24th meaning you can engage with the event from wherever you are in (most places around) the world. 

STOP PRESS: The on line version of the fair will now happen a week later on September 22nd and run for a week

Ticket details are up on the Art Car Boot Fair website, there’s a variety of entry prices, early bird deals, cheaper tickets that get you in after 3pm (entry will be free after 5pm) and likewise tickets are on sale for the online event that allow you to have first pickings before the whole online event becomes free to enter after the initial first two hours (and I imagine participating artists will be adding work to the online event once the live event has happened, as well as having work available exclusively for the on line event, well worth checking out the online event more than just the once). 

We’ll be back with more coverage once the participating artists have been announced. What I would like to say right now while you’re having a look at what I’d say are more than reasonable ticket prices, what id like to say as an artist who has been invited to participate in quite a few Art Car Boot Fairs over the last nineteen years, and yes I am kind of repeating myself here and I make no apology for doing so, I will say that the Art Car Boot Fair is (sadly) almost unique in terms of the way Karen Ashton and her hard working team treat the invited artists. Most so called art fairs make the artists jump through all kinds of (financial) hoops in terms of applying (and often charge what is cynically called an “admin fee” just to apply before we even get to the eye-watering costs involved in actually taking part), they then delight in going on to charge the participating artists an arm and several legs in terms all l the extras once they’ve actually charges is to take part. These other fairs aren’t really curated events, they tend to take anyone willing to stump up the often outrageous fees demanded, there is no real quality control, if you can afford to pay then on the whole, you’re in. The Art Car Boot Fair is very much a curated thing, artists are invited, it is never a case of submissions, it is a non-stop operation in terms of searching out and inviting new artists to join the regulars (some who have been taking part since the very first one in 2004). No one is ever charged a fee to take part, no commission is taken in terms of sales at the live event, we all happily donate one piece for the ACBF raffle (or lucky dip or whatever they’re doing that particular year), besides that one piece, we keep all the money we make, which allows us to do special car boot fair style deals or just generally keep the prices lower than they would be in galleries or at the other fairs. Yes, a small and very (very) reasonable commission is charged in terms of the online events, a small commission that seems more than fair to me. Personally I refuse to take part in most of the other fairs. In short, the Art Car Boot Fair is an artist-run artist-friendly event where most so called art fairs are little more than cynical artist-exploiting events. I detest the way the other fairs treat artists as nothing more than cash cows, I love being part of The Art Car Boot Fair. True, it has evolved over the years, the Art Car Boot Fair isn’t quite the gloriously chaotic anarchic thing it was back there in the early days but then sadly the London art Scene (and especially East London) isn’t anywhere near what it was even a handful of years ago.

The Art Car Boot Fair is one of the very few things left that is genuinely artist friendly, if you really want to support us artists then please do support the Fair, it does keep a lot of us going for a good chunk of the year and hey, even if you don’t buy a single piece of art on the day it is an excellent day out and we do appreciate you turning up and adding to the fun. The Art Car Boot Fair is one of the highlights of any London art year, not everything about it is perfect, but we love it and we say long live the Art Car Boot Fair!     

Tickets / details

Previously at the Art Car Boot Fair (as always do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run tthe slide show)