So with heavy hearts and terrible hangovers we are just about ready at Sweet HQ to bid farewell to our summer adventure. For those of you who didn’t make it to the Sweet ‘Art Summer Festival and Art Bar Crawl, well you really lucked out. It was awesome, even if we do say so ourselves, and I don’t think we can describe how much fun we had, but we will try.
Firstly the amazing artists! We had some old favourites, Alice Steffen, Joanna Leyla, John Gathercole, Sal Jones, Electra Costa, So-Ha Au and Klaus is Koming to name but a few…
…….and some new faces with great works such as Rob McSweeny, Patricia Shrigley, Gianluca Pisano, Riikka Hyvonen and VJ Von Art!
All providing us with amazing art to exhibit in our 3 festival shows over 3 Shoreditch venues opening on the same day, phew! That was quite an install day!
Our Punch exhibition, taking place at the Espacio Gallery on Bethnal Green Rd had a fun tiki vibe, we then had our Salad Days show and event headed up by Shannon Rose at Juno Bar on Shoreditch High Street, with its fresh, eclectic summer feel, and not forgetting our Queen of Arts exhibition at the Alice in Wonderland themed cocktail bar, The Looking Glass over on Hackney Rd. We were so pleased with our artist call out response, particularly with our selection of works that fitted the decedent, fantasy feel of the Looking Glass Bar for our Queen of Arts show.
No arts festival would be complete without free workshops and we had two of the best through out the week, hosted at our Punch exhibition with Joanna Layla facilitating a ‘Draw Your Own Narrative’ workshop and Joseph Kopial teaching children how to screen print. Brave man!
Our first opening party was for Punch and quite an opening it was. With heavy weight sponsors on board such as the mighty Sailor Jerry Rum and the summery yummyness of Vita Coco, we couldn’t fail.
We dusted of our trusty deckchairs and got breathless blowing up beach balls for one of our fun Sweet ‘Art collaborative installations. We promise no one died during the making of this art work!
Once we had had our fill of rum and great art on our Punch opening night we then headed down to Juno bar for the Salad Days after party with art, live art, amazing music and lots more Sailor Jerry.
We loved doing a take over of Juno’s Open and Live event and John, Danni, Clara and Joanna did an amazing job on the night, also selling one of their collaborative pieces for charity.
We also enjoyed incredible music from the likes of KRALCLIFE, Jim Caesar and Paige Dawkins.
An epic night, and with barely time to recover we were back on the cocktails the following night for our Queen of Arts opening at The Looking Glass Bar. A decadent and indulgent night with all the usual Sweet ‘Art charm, we enjoyed an evening of anatomical heart cakes and Queen of Arts signature cocktails while taking in the incredible artworks and trying not to disappear down the rabbit hole.
…..and what of the Art Bar Crawl we hear to you cry! Well it was the perfect end to the festival and probably our favourite part too. Starting at our Punch show with copious amounts of Sailor Jerry rum punch we gathered to take in the works in a less busy gallery, discuss art and get merry before interesting, informative and on occasions, slightly debauched artists talks and a Q&A by Alice Steffen and Rikka Hyvonen. Alice had had a few, it was her birthday!
After a few more drinks we headed off, tourist convoy in London style, following our trusty Sweet ‘Art stick (all of us have a new favourite thing!) to the Looking Glass for Queen of Arts cocktails……
……and then on to Juno for some Salad Days fun with more artists talks from Klaus is Koming and Jenny Runacre, more drinks and some tunes to finish off the night! We sure had some fun with that stick!
So an incredible week with our Salad Days show remaining up until the 14th of September, do pop down if you haven’t yet had the chance and see you next year Sweet ‘Arts, for bigger and better!
Sweet 'Art 