When I was a kid Andy Warhol and the Factory was it, Pop Art was it, i grew up on an island off a bigger island on the coast of North Wales, I wasn’t like one of these city kids with art galleries around every corner, Manchester and Liverpool were a good few hours away on the train, there wasn’t even a stuffy museum, there wasn’t anyone to talk to about art in a serious way, there was no one to tell you you might one day be able to hang a painting on a gallery wall and that people would want to come and see it. It all looked uninviting, all looked unfriendly, it all looked hundreds of miles away  and with no way in, aloof maybe (some of it still is if the truth be told), as a fourteen year old I could see no path to any of it,let alone a door at the end of a path.

As a fourteen year old my main obsession was music, I was hoovering up everything, and pop art and Andy Warhol and Zips on Rolling Stones album covers and The Velvet Underground. Pop Art was for me, the Factory looked exciting, punk rock was happening, pop art looked like a world that was open, and then graff (well before anyone called anything street art) and the first tastes via American videos and punk rock zines and DIY culture, those doors looked very inviting, looked like I could maybe push them open just enough to find a way in, Pop Art looked exciting, Pop Art was for me.  

Art Car Boot Fair Goes Pop – Lewis Cubitt Square, Kings Cross, London, Saturday September 16th,2023. Midday until 6pm. Entry is by ticket, cheaper after 3pm (free after 5pm and i;m told if the weather is good we go on until 7pm)