£1 Art Sale

Portrait photographs courtsey of John Lynch

There is going to be a £1 Art Sale going on at the Night and Day Bar on Oldham Street in Manchester's Northern Quarter. This is going to be a strange affair, all work is priced at a pound be it painting, collage or whatever.

As soon as I heard about I wanted to get involved. It took to about 1.30am last night to get my table booked and now I am going to shoot off as I have to be there in about 2 hours. I am selling rusty bolts and various prints of the Lucien Fellowes Road-Side Markings series.

I am a little precious about the bolts as they are part of an ongoing series that I hope will accumulate into an exhibition. These artifacts may get snubbed at such an event but they are a valid artful source. I hope...

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The whole £1 Art Sale thing was an all in all good experience. We, the artists, got shown our places and I had a quite a fitting space with a wall where I could hang an A0 sized print and I then began to dress my table. I had a fine selection of nuts and bolts, my corroded box of business cards, some A3 prints and the last of the books that I had printed earlier last year.

The artists ranged from illustrators, collagists and graffiti based illustrators. I had two friends who attended the sale as art sellers and they sold quite well, the art was at a bargain price. This event had, to me, the same feelings as the art burning exercise that happens up at Islington Mill. Instead of firing your work up into the dark blue, here you have the chance to purge yourself and make a small amount of pocket change. It was both a cathartic experience and sometimes exhilirating one too.

Whenever I had people milling around to my corner of the sale I began my pitch and described what I had to offer to guys who were generally interested and opened up the somewhat quite bewildered ones. It is a little strange to see rusted bolts at an art sale but as I have said earlier, these items are art. At this point I would like to give my wholeheartedly appreciation to the three people who actually bought one of the Road-Side Artifacts Numbered One-Two & Three.