Integrating into the public conscious
In a similar way to that of the artists we publish we want our work to take many different guises and combine and involve many different areas of popular culture and entertainment so they can be looked at in similar terms, understood and enjoyed more widely. We had Cheap Zine but that wasn’t enough, we wanted to be involved in more to draw attention to new image making as important yet fun and accessible so for this to work we needed more coverage.
The first thing we were involved in was an event in the Netherlands called ShopStop which was set up and ran by our friend Yvonne Klasen whom we met through Cheap Zine. The event encompassed drawing, installation, music, fashion and obviously shops and although we unfortunately couldn’t attend were are led to believe it was a success (and I presume it was as it was their third event within eighteen months). This was the kind of thing we wanted to be doing, setting up events that would bring people with all kinds of different cultural interests together because although art, fashion etc. are not all the same they can be a lot closer than people think and mutually beneficial and there are places where they overlap.
We had already began to make Cheap products to promote ourselves a little bit more such as badges and stickers and then we heard about ANTIFREEZE 2009, an art car boot sale set up by artist group Contents May Vary which gave us a chance to sell our zines, existing products and tote bags and meet some new people. It was around this time too that we got involved with Alice Bradshaw’s Temporary Art Space in a zine show and a group exhibition (one of our zines already being there when we arrived and not by us!).
The next thing to be added to the Cheap oveur was critical writing in the form of a review of a group show of new image making called inkygoodness 3: Wonderland (which can be read here: ), a new feature and hopefully a constant on a-n and the Cheap blog and myspace. This is important as there isn’t much writing out there on new image making and it is needed to develop and help give context to this movement. A future review for a book by Michael Dhillon is also soon to be published online at the author’s request to show the opinions of people outside the literary field.
The latest thing to be added to the Cheap roster has been creative fair A Cheap Affair, ran by us and hosted by Islington Mill which brought together art, craft and fashion and there are plans for future events also including live music.
So this is how we approach Cheap now, with the Zine and products, events and exhibitions and critical writing.
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