To plug the funding gap left by Camden Council – one of its former core funders – Camden Arts Centre needs to raise up to half a million pounds each year to fund its free exhibitions, events and education projects. This Saturday 16 March sees a spectacular fundraising initiative take over the Centre and gardens in an effort to secure £100,000 towards its annual target.
The Big Bamboozle is a day of avant-garde classes, workshops and trickery (donations support the Centre’s residency programme), followed by a ticketed evening party and auction of works by leading artists including Anna Barriball, Melanie Jackson, David Batchelor, Cornelia Parker and Richard Wentworth.
The imaginary cause for ‘raucous’ celebration is the 99th birthday of Finchley Arkwright-Keslake-Essendine (F.A.K.E) – “pioneering modernist, founder of the little-known proto-appropriationist movement Mimicism and, for the last nine years, the only nonagenarian life-model in Hampstead.”
The Centre will be transformed, in the fictional Finchley’s honour, into a 1920s seaside home, complete with artist-designed beach huts and a bohemian pub. Daytime activities such as Art Deco life drawing and haptic intuitive portraiture (using invisible inks), will prepare visitors for the glamorous evening of ‘champagne, art and salty excess’ that follows.
Works for auction have been specially created in the bamboozling spirit of Mimicism, each lot imitating or inspired by another – Cornelia Parker’s Desperate Measures mimicking Duchamp’s 3 Standard Stoppages for example.
Tickets for The Big Bamboozle Evening Party can be bought here. Auction and bidding at camdenartscentre.org/the-big-bamboozle
