Busy times, always busy times, art should be busy.  Colchester and the adventures in the big Firstsite Golden Banana were stimulating, excellent day, lots of opinions, good people and a positive time, more on the Cultivate blog later.

The Deadcuts gig at the Ritter Zamit gallery over in Whitechapel last Saturday night was delightfully full ob “Back in rehearsal after the best weekend to date – destroyed the gallery along with our good friends and allies Jason Atomic, Sophie Macdonald, Joni Belaruski, Adam Espira, Sean Worrall and Starsha Lee” said a Deadcut.  There’s some coverage and photos via Organ magazine and yes, rather like it when art and bands come together like that

A couple of new pieces were hung at Ritter Zamit last Saturday,  “Sometimes They Have Thorns” is a gold and silver acrylic painted piece on a found piece of wood (48cm x 6cm) and somebody left this old print in a rather weathered gold frame outside the studio on Saturday morning (thank you whoever you were), and if something is left then there’s a good chance things will grow on it, fresh layers of gold and silver and such in this case.  “Swan” was the second new piece (71cm x 60cm) hung at the Ritter Zamit gallery last Saturday.

2015 has been about painting and the #365ArtDrops and letting curating take a backseat (well besides the big Play show that sucked up a lot of time and effort). The first Cultivate show of 2016 will be Reveal, it will happen in a white-walled railway arch in East London on Thursday 7th January and will run until Sunday 10th January.

The latest parts of the #365ArtDrops piece…

Part320, was painted on a found block of beautifully tactile wood that really feels like a piece of tree, found in a skip outside a wood yard in Hackney, painted on and left on a wall outside Firstsite Gallery in Colchester on November 18th, there for someone to take should they wish.  We were in Colchester for a talk about open calls, more on that in a bit.  Part 321 was also left in Colchester, hanging on a golden Routemaster bus.  Part 322 was left on an East London wall with the last of the red leaves and part 323 went out last Sunday, down on a suitable blue wall (these placings are always considered) by the Regent’s canal in Hackney, East London. We’ve heard about three of the four pieces, the two Colchester pieces now have homes and a girl called Mary found the piece by the canal .

Latess #365ArtDrops, click on an image to enlarge or run the slide show