Art Car Boot Fair X LowLife, Way Art West at Scale Space, West London, July 2024 –  Get out of the way? We’ve gone West, way art west, Indeed so, get out of the way (fat) man, you got something to do. Vote Out to Help Out they said, go fill up your hands till they’re shining up at you they sang, It might have been falling like (lots and lots of) water, coming down from those skies but we did all go west (young man) and come on, come on, come on, come on, there are many ways (to live there) in the sun or shade or the torrential rain of the Friday evening after the long long night before.  And so,after the joy of staying up all night to watch the entitlement of Mogg come crashing down alongside the unhinged insanity of Truss and the poisonous arrogance of the rest of the rest of them, we headed for a Friday evening Way Art West with the Art Car Boot Fair and LowLife. Friday evening out in West London, out there under the Westway and all the killing jokes and the pinkwinds that go with that concrete clash of culture that stands amongst the new builds and the sprouting towers and the new wave not quite brutality of West London Legoland. The Friday after the Thursday before, after the general election that was the day before, after the relief of that Ten O’clock first exit poll announcement and finally after fourteen years of the self-serving dishonesty, after the fourteen years the lies, the fourteen years of, as Jeremy Deller has been putting it recently, swimming in their shit,of  their Lockdown parties (because their rules own didn’t apply to them), after fourteen years of their manipulation and their lies on the sides of buses and the pure relief of getting rid of those damn Tories and all their crooked right wing ways, just the relief of it all, the slight hint that there may be some hope or at least some people trying to do things somewhere closer to the right way…

Now let’s have it right here, for the sake of clarity and all that, let’s get it right, no one is saying that the new Labour government are perfect and we’re not expecting unicorns shitting rainbows anytime soon, and there are the gathering black clouds of those horrible bastards even further right than those damn Tories, but for now it is enough that the Tories are out, tonight it is enough that they are at last gone, that for now we have something that isn’t from the people who were serving up Boris and the rest of the Bullingdon club. No, this version of Labour is far far far from perfect and there will be questions to ask, but you sense that this new government’s first thoughts are not for their own pockets and their own profits and their own share holdings and how they might personally profit from the mess they are making at everyone else’s expense and for now – that and the fact that the Greens got four seats – for now that is enough and it might have been absolutely pissing it down in West London on the Friday night after Thursday’s election but that can’t dampen the spirits, that can’t kill the joy of the evening after the long night before. The relief for now, all the “they’ve gone at last!” and the recounting of did you stay up for Moog and I had to hang on to see Truss go, the rain can’t kill any of that. We’ll worry about those further right in a day or two, there is a fight coming, but tonight we’re going to dance to the finest of NY flavoured House music in the biblical rainstorms by the Westway where The Clash once played and before that Hawkwind and Pink Fairies took to flight, tonight we’re going to dance with the help of the excellent LowLife DJs and a group of artists gathered together under a concrete flyover in West London…

We’re at a small scale version of the Art Car Boot fair, nowhere near as big a the main event that this year happens in early September in Kings Cross, the list of invited artists reads (in alphabetical order) like this: Camille Phoenix, Charlie Evarist-Boyce, Christian Furr, Christine Binnie, Daisy Gammon, Emma Harvey, Flying Leaps, Grow Up with Billy The Kid, Julia Maddison, Jayne Right, Juno Calypso, Keira Rathbone, Marie Brenneis, Misha Milovanovich, Mizuki Doura, Oli Fowler, Pure Evil, Rachel Megawhat, Rankin, Sean Worrall, Tatty Devine, The Misfortune Teller as well as the aforementioned LowLife DJs Frank Broughton and Sarah Tonin.  The event is part of something called the White City Summer Series, we’re almost under the Westway on a newly built basketball court on what is right now little more that a building site where the new Imperial College campus is rising – actually it is rather confusing, where the hell is it actually happening? There’s cement mixers everywhere, we’re somewhere near where the White City Stadium once was, there’s no sign of a sign, there’s people getting lost and giving up the pouring rain but those of us who have made it want to dance, and well it is just too wet for the art and Sarah Tonin is spinning some fine fine (fine) New York Citi Peech Boys and life for this moment, for just this night, just this victory, is indeed something special and well this is the thing about the Art Car Boot Fair, it is about the moment.

yes, the Art Car boot, something that has been evolving for around twenty years of so now, is as much about the actual event, about the people and the moment as it is about the art and tonight the artistic force known as Grow Up are covering anything that moves with there hastily modified dayglo orange Vote Out To Help out stickers that are now hand customised to read I Voted out The Help Out and it could so easily have been a post election downpour wash out – that was seriously seriously heavy rain, some of my art might not have survived! – but the Tories have been voted out and the DJs are doing a brilliant job and were out in the rain under the Westway (and all that cultural history attached to the Westway) and everyone is in great humour and for once we couldn’t care less about the weather – such a beautiful wash out of an evening, fine fine times. Life can indeed sometimes be something special, music can sometimes be something very special, art is so often something special and we might not have needed a reason but we have more than good reason to be dancing like fools in the rain tonight and and a Trouble Funk sample never sounded so good. Oh yes, there were, as the Art Car Boot Fair team said themselves, some brilliant moments and a truly great atmosphere despite that relentlessly driving rain! 

Art has always been a force for good and we need things like this to happen, we need art to pull people together, we’re going to need it more than ever in the months and years to come, things were smoking on the (go go scene) last Friday night, DJs Frank Broughton and Sarah Tonin were the stars of the evening, they had it just right, some of the best things happen in the pouring rain, see you in September for the Art Car Boot Fair’s main event, art is a force for good, can we please have some sunshine for the main event? See you in September, we need art, we need community, we need it all… (sw)  

Art Car Boot Fair

As always, do click on an image to see the whole thing or to run the slide show and