Art From London Markets, a-n feature

PARALLAX- HOW WAS IT FOR YOU? @PARALLAXARTFAIR @ASHLEIGHDIX

As my first ever Art Fair, Parallax was a very good learning experience, I have never spoken to so many people in such a short period of time, about my work. People were very positive, I guess the people who didn’t like it would have walked on by. There were a lot of stalls there. I got alot of very positive feed back which was nice. I had some quite serious interest in the large piece I had on sale which I am hoping will materialise into a sale after the event, and I sold a smaller piece. If I had been able to find out about the cost of posting to Russia I would have sold the big piece, however it had been the one postal destination I could not get a quote for despite calling TNT and DHL in advance. During the Fair that painting was imagined on a Russian bedroom wall and a London dining room. One thing I really should have done, and regret not having done, is to have taken the Russian woman’s contact details. I got the London couple so I can invite them to the next show and hopefully they will have had more time to consider and will buy. They both have my card. My next bit of work next week will be to follow up with the people I made contact with.

We seemed to be in a good spot, not necessarily in terms of the geography of the room, but in terms of the artists around, who were friendly and had work of good quality. I shared my booth with the lovely Paul Brown, whose beautiful work and mine sat happily along side each other. His work can be seen at/boughtfrom www.riseart.com/artist/paul-brown

We were opposite Ashleigh Dix, a twitter connection which has now materialised into a
real world one, always a nice thing and you can follow her on twitter @ashleighdix see her work on
ashleighdix.com/gallery and she has recently been posted on instagram by Oaktree and Tiger. She shared with the very friendly Rodney Durso see his work at www.rodneydurso.com who had come from New York especially and had chopped up Donald Trump (hurray!). Next to them was Laufey Johansen who can be found on Facebook as Laufey Arnalds Johansen, with her big black abstracts. It was good to discuss publicity materials and techniques and get ideas from them, and this was a very friendly group. In that respect the event was fun, and we were able to give each other moral support and tips.

Like I said there was some serious interest, I chatted to a gallery owner, not one of the galleries I had invited, and a designer, Belma of www.halamar.com expressed an interest in future possibilities. I picked up a good list of names to add to my invitation list for future shows.

However at this point it cost more to put on than I made in sales at the venue. It is a quick turn around being open only for two full days, and there were people who wanted longer to decide. It may be that in the long run this will work out to be a good investment but it is difficult to say just now.

The show was well organised by Parallax, the setting is beautiful: Chelsea Town Hall is a big wedding cake of an interior, and when the band played Eastern European violin music in the bar we could almost have been on the set of War and Peace (without the period costume). It was also good for passing trade. Quite a large number of the attendees who I spoke to came from near by.