The big names of the art world may have been setting up their stalls at Art Basel yesterday, but many of the high-end British contingent preferred to ply their wares rather closer to home at the Art Car Boot Fair, that now annual institution held in a car park just off East London’s Brick Lane. Sir Peter Blake needed a special security guard to control the eager (and depressingly speculative) queues for his £70 specially produced homage-to-Hogarth prints; Mat Collishaw and Polly Morgan both had well-attended stalls, as did Tracey Emin. But although Her Eminence was not actually in evidence, leaving her minions to shift her merchandise, the event was graced by a state visit from the presiding deity of the British art market, Mr Damien Hirst himself, who was there to support Rachel Howard, his former spot painter and now sucessful painter in her own right.
Also attracting keen attention were Gavin Turk’s Liquid Gold sump oil paintings, which lived up to their name by selling out at £250 a pop. However, these pungent pieces might possibly end up costing their purchasers rather more than this, as part of their mutable charm lies in the way in which, once hung vertically on the wall, the newly applied oily puddles create their own painterly trajectories by dribbling down the canvas and dripping onto the floor. But Mr T was keen to stress that unexpected outcomes were part of the dynamic of the piece and that any damage caused by unforeseen slicks is strictly the responsibility of their new owners.