Hoxton, Clerkenwell, Brick Lane, Redchurch Street, and many other once-grotty East London boulevards are now rancid with beautiful losers fantasising that they're living on the Lower East Side whereas in fact they're just busy promoting their own lucrative capitalist careers, talking about their going-nowhere little Myspace bands, staring at "witty" furniture in shop windows, and paying mid-range prices for artefacts and art which'll be available at car boot sales and out of skips in approximately twenty years time.
On Thursday June 7th in Hoxton Square, London, artists will give away their work for free in an event called Art for Nothing! – a chance to give or receive art as part of an open performance at the Hoxton Square Gallery between 6 - 9pm. The event - aimed at promoting the endless mindless exploitative galleries in the hood -is part of Time Out First Thursdays - late night art and events in East London for jazz-loving office jerks and househusbands - which will open up over eighty contemporary art galleries and museums across East London until 9pm on the first Thursdays of every month.
Artists who'll be giving their art away include Kate Buckley, Kirsty Harris, Mark Jason Kemp, Jonny Reding, Lawrence Taylor and the Brid A Art Collective from Slovenia. Members of the public are invited to come along and will be given vouchers to acquire the work on display and being created specially on the night. If demand for one work is high, vouchers will be drawn from a hat to decide who gets to take the work away.
Participating galleries and museums will open late until 9pm on the First Thursday of every month i.e. Thursday 7th June, Thursday 5th July, Thursday 2nd August and ongoing.
Go get one of those free works of art if you can. It's a solid investment and a hedge against inflation.
Joe Ambrose's next book, Chelsea Hotel Manhattan, is being published by Headpress.
