We’re less than a week away from this year’s live real life there to interact with the artists face to face Art Car Boot Fair thing now, well we were a week away when I started writing this piece, we’re a day away from all the fun of the fair now.
The 2025 Art Car Boot Fair is just a day away now, Saturday 20th September 2025, midday until 6pm, Cubitt Square, Kings Cross, London. Ticket details at the end…
Once again it all happend over in the (brave?) new world of Kings Cross, once again surrounded by the shiny new towers of the almost unrecognisable Cubitt Square over in North London’s Kings Cross somewhere in the once wastelands left by the railways a a place where once beautifully grimy stream engines rested in their fields of coal, where oil-covered Deltic diesels got ready to roar and charge back up the East Coast to go get Carter again and where later we danced in the ruins of it all, in the ruins that were the warehouses of Bagleys and well they say if you can remember all that you weren’t really there.
Bagleys is long gone – is there really a gentrified park named after it? That really is rubbing salt in the open wounds and it is a very very (very) different London now, a shiny new London. A London of way too many coffee shops, endless designer cakes and rents unaffordable to most (certainly to most artists), We’re in 2025, this is a city for those who have it to flaunt it on every corner, of every space taken for more coffee and more cakes and hot desks and here today gone tomorrow and everything looking the same and creativity strangled and cut off to all but to all but a lucky few who can afford to create now.
This is a very different London to the one that first saw the now twenty one year old Art Car Boot Fair first emerge; “Shiny” is an adjective describing something with a smooth, bright, glossy surface that reflects light, such as polished metal. Those who say the Art Car Boot Fair isn’t what it once was are right, how can they not be? It was a very very (very) different London that saw the first artist-led Art Car Boot Fairs down Brick Lane, it was a very different (rather exciting) playground back then, there were almost endless possibilities for (us) artists in the buildings that no one else much wanted to use let alone could be bothered to pull down. It was a very different city, a very different world, all those empty spaces, all those playgrounds. And maybe because of it the artists back there were different creatures? Maybe the way things came together and happened were very very different? How on earth could the Art Car Boot Fair still be like it was back then? It seems silly to even entertain the question. How could anything be like it was? These are very very (very) different times so why would you expect it to be like it was?
Okay, so Tracey might not show up these days or Gavin or Bob or Roberta, but that was all then and this is the right here right now, this is what we have now and I for one, even though I’m really not feeling like comedy and nothing seems that funny right now, I for one am almost defiantly looking forward to another Art Car Boot Fair over in Kings Cross under Meta’s nose) this Saturday…
yeah yeah, I know, I’m always saying this, I’ve been taking part in the annual event since 2009, annual in terms the main London event once of Brick Lane, an event that has now called Kings Cross home for a good few years. Yes it is a London thing, true we have been on Art Cat Boot Fair adventures in Liverpool, in Hastings, in the concrete basements of Dreamland over in Margate, on the seafront at part of the Triennial in Folkestone, that time deep in a forest in Sussex, the time during the very early days of the Olympic Park while they were still building the starts of it, that time at the Apple Cart Festival in all that torrential rain – I’m talking out of town adventures with the the proper Art Car Boot Fair, the proper one set up by Karen Ashton and her team back at the start of the century, not the impersonators and the copy cats who try to ape it (flattery I guess). There’s been lots of brilliant adventures with the real Art Car Boot Fair and yes, now I think about it, I’ve probably taken part in about thirty Art Car Boot Fair events now including every single big one since 2009…
And it always a delight to be invited, something never to be taken for granted (even if I do sometimes get frustrated and shout about it). I liked the fair before that first invite, I went to quite a few, wrote about them for Organ, bought bits of art, I got run over by roller skating hula hoop dancers one year, if I wasn’t in the first few I certainly was there writing about it. What I’m saying here is that we’ve seen a lot in terms of the Art Car Boot Fair, we’ve seen it evolve and at the same time we’ve seen London’s various art scenes change, we’ve seen so many artists come and go, we’ve seen whole art streets come and go, we’ve seen mouthy galleries come along shout the odds and then make off with the artist’s money, we’ve seen fights, arguments, been to brilliant parties (been in fights) we’ve seen it all, we’ve done the lot and was I making a point here? Yes, the art scene, I was trying to make some point about the London Art Scene as well as this city we still just about manage to call home, some point about a set of art scenes that have evolved many times since the Art Car Boot Fair first became a thing.
The point was how could the fair possibly be expected to be the same now as it was then? Stop moaning, stop living in the past, move on, the Art Car Boot Fair as it is right now is still very much one of the highlights of the London art calendar, it might even be better than it was now…
This is 2025, this is quarter of the way through this still new century, of course the Art Car Boot Fair isn’t the same, surely it would be a worry if it still was? Stagnant art? No thanks! No no no, and the nothing’s-worth-pissing-on-these-days brigade need move on with their one hand clapping ’cause the other’s holding a phone, they need to go do just that, they need to move on (thanks for the line Brian, the album review is on the way).
The Art Car Boot Fair is now, the Fair is fun, the fair right now is an escape from both the constraints of the art world and I guess, as the organisers themsleves are hoping with this year’s theme, from the world itself (I still can’t get with the comedy aspect at the moment myself, but that’s me, no fun!). I’m looking forward to seeing what the current crop of artists are going to bring along, I’m looking forward to tomorrow, I’m looking forward to seeing what Rugman or Rosemary Cronin or Modern Toss or Ladymuck or Geraldine Swayne or Laura New might bring along (and now I’ve probably offended someone by not mentioning them over the last few weeks in the various countdown pieces, seems I’m rather good at offending the London art scene at the moment!). I’m looking forward to avoiding Kunsty and his pies, hell, I’m even looking forward to all the stress of getting up early and getting the art there and watching Pure Evil’s grin grow, I’m looking forward to seeing what old Cultivate collaborators Quiet British Accent, Emma Harvey or Julia Maddison are going to be bringing, to the return of Dion Kitson, the latest Susie Hamilton paintings of Christine Binnie’s always desirable pieces or what Marnie Scarlet might be wearing or seeing if Grow Up get arrested or what’s happening on the Sweet Art stage or what Sadie Hennessy might be thinking, I’m looking forward to bringing along some art of my own…
Right now we all need the Art Car Boot Fair more than ever, London needs it more than ever, we need these Artist-led bites and pokes at things, we need these glimpses, we need to know there still might be possibilities. We need to bypass the gutless gatekeepers both old and new, we need to damn well (try to) smile, we need art as a force for good (As Sean Scully likes to say) and we are we having fun yet? I was about to say we need things like the Art Car Boot Fair but it has always been rather unique and while it might not be quite so anarchic these days, it probably is even more unique some twenty one years on from when it all started than it ever was.
There simply aren’t other things like the fair, other things that treat artists the way the fair does, that don’t look at the artists as the cash cows, the targets of the business model, all the Other art fairs and such. Sure, it is curated, very carefully so, the organisers are very picky, not like the fairs where whoever can pay the often outrageous fees gets in whatever their art might taste like. Right now we need spaces and places where artists and art can come together like they do at the Art Car Boot Fair, where the gatekeepers (or finances) don’t completely dictate what’s shown and what isn’t, where the gatekeepers don’t get to say who’s cool this week, we need things that push back at all that, we need places and spaces where we artists can just cut through all the crap and sell our art without all the bullshit.
And we need spaces where new artists can share walls, bills, car boots, ideas and more with those who have walked it rather than just talked talked it for a little longer, we need places where those who maybe have been around a little longer don’t just get thrown aside and left high and dry by this rather fractured (awfully ageist) London art scene we have now. The Art Car Boot Fair is refreshing, it excites when these days most of London’s art maybe doesn’t, damn, now I’m guilty of saying it, much better in my day sings Gazelle Twin.
Some people might not like what we have to say here on these pages about the London Art Scene, we are constantly told by the galleries and the PR types they employ that we ask too many questions, that we show no respect, that we don’t toe the line. We’re expected to constantly say everything is beautifully lemon pie perfect and doff our caps and say what they want us to say. they don’t like it when we don’t, when we point out of it really is. We’re not welcome in a number of London’s Galleries these days, I’m not welcome as an artist in a number of London’s spaces because of the way things are called on these pages, I tell you this so hopefully you appreciate that when we say something is good you realise we mean it and that I’m not just saying this because I’m one of the participating artists, I think I can reasonably claim to be no yes man.
So here we are, day before this year’s Art Car Boot Fair. I like taking part in the Art Car Boot Fair, it isn’t perfect, what is? I like where it falls in the calendar now, it is kind of like a last Summer fling before we start seriously thinking about the Autumn art season’s openings, about Freeze week and all that that brings. I like this last fling of the Summer even if it does feel a touch more like a last stand this year. I like all the engagement, I like the faces old and new, I like the colour, the art, I like the people watching, the conversations, the performance, the hats and the heels, the questions and yes, hopefully the selling (at very silly prices like you won’t find when the same art is shown in a gallery). I like taking part in the Art Car Boot Fair
The Art Car Boot Fair happens in London tomorrow in Kings Cross, North London. I like taking part in the Art Car Boot Fair, it feels more important now and in many ways far better now, certainly more needed now that it ever was, bring it all on, are we having fun yet? If you’ve read this far, hit us up here at Organ for a cheap entry code but don’t tell anyone I said that…. (sw)
The 2025 Art Car Boot Fair is just a day away now, Saturday 20th September 2025, midday until 6pm, Cubitt Square, Kings Cross, London – Earlybird tickets are (still, how does that work, the late bird still catches the worm?) on sale now via the Fair’s website (do make sure you look at the Earlybird ticket option just underneath the regular tickets, earlybird tickets are £10, while £5 tickets that get you in later/cheaper are a little further down the page).
Previously on these pages
THE ORGAN 