According to the countdown counter thing on the Art Car Boot Fair website, that counter that does like to mock us participating artists as we make work especially for the event, there are now less that that sixty days to this year’s always much anticipated Art Car Boot Fair’s main annual event.

If we have it right then this is year is twenty-one years on from the very first Art Car Boot Fair back there in what was then a very very different London. The Art Car Boot Fair was born in very different times, we had a very different art scene back there, a playground we can only dream of a quarter of the way through this current century. The London of now is a London of gleaming skyscrapers, of unaffordable new builds where once broken buildings were DIY galleries that artists came together to make things happen and well that was then, enough of that. And now? Well now the Art Car Boot Fair is a different beast, how can we expect it not to be? The fair now takes place surrounded by the freshly spouted gleam of sculpted tower blocks and the expensive coffee shops that are most of London in these not quite so roaring 20s and well all we artists can really do is (almost defiantly) laugh in the face of it all. 

This year the theme of the Art Car Boot Fair is Comedy and The Comic. I guess alongside all the cast amounts of art we can expect comedians, fun and maybe a slightly angst-ridden artist or two ignoring the theme completely? The themes are never that strict and the fair does always kick up something for almost everyone with artists of all shapes and sizes sitting in their car boots contradicting each other. Actually it is more tables and gazebos these days, it is still that spirit of a car boot fair though with artists selling their work directly at art car boot fair prices rather than gallery prices. Expect work especially produced for the fair, limited editions, one off pieces, never to be repeated prices, expect the expected, expect the unexpected.  Wherever we are with the ever evolving sometimes rather fractured London art scene the Art Car Boor Fair is always one of the art year’s highlights, there is always lots of good art and yes, it is always a brilliant day out whether you buy art art or just enjoy the art. The fair is always alive with good art, with entertainment, it always makes for good people watching, there is always music, dancing, drinking, I expect this year there will be comedy, performance and fun alongside the very serious business of art, I expect there will be clowns, cake, I expect I really don’t know quite what to expect other than another really good day.

The Art Car Boot’s main event will once again happen in Kings Cross at Coal drop Yard, the Art Car Boot Fair organisers say “our hosts at Kings X are situated in a dynamic award winning urban regeneration project with exciting independent retail outlets, restaurants, cafés & bars – so make a day of it! There are public amenities and easy transport links by bus, tube, rail and even canal!” – There you have it, it might be peak gentrification, it might be where once we partied in Bagley’s or before that stream engines were fed and watered but that is where we are with London in 2025 and if you want to just moan about things not being what they were then you’ve lost (Kings Cross was a bleak place back there). 

I love taking part in the Art Car Boot Fair, I love making work especially for it, I love all the engagement, the letting down of hair and and familiar faces and the new ones we hope to see. Fifth Nine days to go, expect information to start flowing.

Earlybird tickets are on sale now via the Fair’s website (do make sure you look at the Earlybird ticket option just underneath the regular tickets)

Art Car Boot Fair

Previously

ORGAN THING: And so the 2023 Art Car Boot Fair happened, drag queens strutted, art popped, performers danced, there was posing, pop music, a piss artist and of course car boots full of art…