Cara a Cara || Face to Face

The Embassy event was really something. There were about a dozen artists from Bolivia who had raised funds to travel to the UK having entered the WEYA (World Event for Young Artists) in Nottingham. The work they had on show in the Embassy was really interesting and a broad range including video, sculpture, photography, painting and performance. From our project there were 6 of us in attendance, which was great and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, it was a privilege to be invited, and a thank you email was promptly sent.

Whilst at the event we received another invite from the “Anglo Latin American Foundation” to a gastronomic food fair – if you love your food, see the attached flyer for details. On that note I have to say the food at this event was amazing – I was totally transported back to Sucre with the delicious empanadas (bite sized pasties) doing the rounds.

It’s great to see that the artists on board our project are really being pro-active: spreading the word about the project; getting galleries they have links with on board; sourcing goodies for our events; applying to organisations for input and support. I’m really excited to be working with such a great bunch of people. This blog has been a long time in my head and now I’m almost up-to-date I just want to say we have made great progress so far and I know we are all really excited by what’s still to come.

An aside – late last week I got news that good a friend from my Uni (Kevin Fitzpatrick) took his own life. This is devastating news for everyone who knew him and has left us all feeling shocked, lost and vulnerable. He was a great guy, a great artist with lots of new and exciting projects in the pipeline; the last person you would think would do such a thing. He will be sadly missed.



An update was the next step – let all the artists know all this good news, keep the momentum going. They are just as excited as I am, which is great stuff, and welcome the invite to the Embassy – this will be great PR for us – to go along and meet Bolivian artists, officials and friends of the Embassy. It’s short notice but even if two or three of us can put in an appearance…

I informed Terry too, let him know what progress is being made, and remind myself really that we are indeed moving forward. Terry was also quick back, asking what week we would ideally like to have use of the venue. Thinking about the conversations we had around involving local school children and the community, February half term would make sense. Then we could run some workshops with local children alongside an exhibition of the works, some tuition in portrait drawing/painting maybe. Hopefully we can make this happen, quite a few of the artists are really keen on this idea.

I haven’t mentioned the artists yet, because I thought it better to check they didn’t mind being identified here in my blog, the great news is that they welcome the mention. So I’ll attach the slide I took to the Embassy with an example of their work and add their details to this post.

I also had a chat with Bow Arts Trust, where my studio is, regarding the possible involvement of the education side if we were to hold workshops early next year. Rob Smith, Head of Education and Learning at Bow Arts Trust, has been really supportive and encouraging and has offered to assist us in any way they can. Brilliant.

One of the artists – Sarah – is also a bar manager in town and through her contacts has managed to secure some South American beer for our exhibition(s) which is great news too, well done Sarah… lots of details like this that need to be addressed soon. But the printing is probably the most pressing, finding the funds for making this possible. I know a little bit about crowd-funding and really want to make time and explore this option – put up a pitch on one of these sites, see if we can raise the necessary funds this way.

As part of the email to the Embassy with the translated version of our presentation, they also wanted an indication of how our timeline looks now. This is a tough one as it highlights to me just how many moving parts there still are.

Ambitiously I’m thinking:

– All artwork complete by mid January

– An initial exhibition at the end of January/beginning of February, possibly South London – I’ve trying to investigate the Bow Arts project space at our site down there, but I’ve nothing tangible to report just yet.

– An exhibition in East London during school half term (18-22^nd Feb) with workshops for local children.

– Concluding with an exhibition and auction in West London, possibly a Bolivian Embassy building (week beginning 24^th Feb).