To say that I've been looking forward to the opening of this year's Venice Biennale (and the party/private view week that precedes it) is a bit of an understatement, but now I have even more reason to be excited about it – even if it does mean that I won't be running around and checking out as quite many events as much as I'd like.
Coinciding with the preview week of this year's Biennale, the A plus A Gallery will be hosting the Rob Pruitt's Flea Market, Venice. And I will be taking part. In fact, I've pretty much been spending the last two weeks, working all through the night on new pieces for the event. I've been creating wooden wall plaque paintings and drawings, mostly based upon my sketchbook work – all of which will be for sale at the RPFM. Sticking with the Italian theme, I'm also having some tote bags, featuring my DaVinciPuss design (my take on Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man drawing), printed up especially for the event. They should be arriving from the screen printers any day now, so I'll post an image of one of them as soon as I get my mitts on them.
The first time that I became aware of the American artist, Rob Pruitt, and his internationally-travelling flea market project was in 2009 when he did a Christmas Flea Market at the Tate Modern in London. It was loads of fun and featured stalls by well known artists such as Tracey Emin and YBA, Gavin Turk, as well as those by lesser known artists. I bought a few pieces of artwork, including a couple of sweet, David Shrigleyesque drawings on blocks of wood (yes, that's where I stole the idea. Of drawing on bits of wood – not the drawings themselves. What do you take me for) by Jimp.
So here we have a few of the pieces that I've already created for the RPFMV, but if you'd like to see more then please feel free to check out my Oodles of Doodles blog.
Rob Pruitt's Flea Market, Venice
'A plus A Gallery', San Marco 3073
5th - 8th May 2015 (open 12-8pm – free entry)
E: press@aplusa.it
T: 00 39 041 277 04 66
www.aplusa.it
The project is organized by the students of the “22nd Course in Curatorial Practices and Contemporary Arts” at The School for Curatorial Studies Venice, and curated by Tommaso Speretta.