Vauxhall Art Car Boot Sale @ Old Truman Brewery
Words by Dave Axbey
The ridiculously sunny day had something to do with it, I suppose. The small family of cocktails strolling past the old uvula may have played their part too. Either way, the urge to pluck a self-satisfied Young British Artist type – all Mockney and air kisses – out of the throng and administer a brisk shoeing rapidly gave way to a sort of disgustingly starry-eyed benevolence.
Post-modernism at its perkiest, the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Sale was working its magic and I, quite frankly, resented it. Something so determinedly kooky and self-consciously hip had no right to be so enjoyable, I reasoned. Take that pair of willowy trustafarians earnestly inspecting the small plaster sculpture of a penis – straight out of a Private Eye cartoon, no? And still the m. of human k. was sloshing around inside to a quite startling degree. I exchanged smiles with the wang-loving trustafarians; I grinned at the sign offering Barbara Cartland style romantic advice; I played the World’s First Human Fruit Machine. I discovered a girl knitting what, on closer investigation, turned out to be woollen nipple tassles and toyed with the idea of buying a cactus in a car part. I gargled another cocktail to the strains of a band called The Sundae Kups, and kicked myself for missing such intriguingly named acts as the Bendy Burlesque Duo and the Bum Bum Train. I… well, you get the general idea.
Levity. Jollification. General rejoicing. The big draw of the annual Vauxhall-sponsored fair may be the presence of name players such as Peter Blake, Gavin Turk, Bob & Roberta Smith and Natasha Law, but it’s the all-pervading sense of fun that really makes it such a godamn good day out. I may not much about art, but I know what I like – and the Vauxhall Art Car Boot Sale most definitely falls into that category. Mind you, if anyone fancies a brace of rather beautifully knitted nipple tassles (unused, one careful owner) do please feel free to get in touch.
Posted Mon, June 29, 2009