Taking place in a disused butcher shop located in Deptford, London, a month-long Meat Market project is divided into two exhibitions, talks and some spontaneous events. Participating artists will use old fridges, metal meat displays and weirdly planned rooms to showcase their works, which do not conform to the conventional art world due to their themes or formats. The project aims to provide artists with a platform to experiment and produce pieces that they have always wanted to create but have not had the chance to do so previously.
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Meat Market #1 (11th - 21st May), features artists whom I deeply respect and with whom I had many conversations about their challenges with censorship, as well as the difficulties of selling or storing their works. For Meat Market #2 (25th May - 4th June), artists from Meat Market #1, select other artists to replace their work who face similar problems, themes and sensitivity.
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As a part of the Meat Market project, I invited curators, artists and art advisors to talk about their experiences of working in the art world and share some tips on how to survive in this competitive environment.
"Exhibiting in Unique and Affordable Spaces" with Aimée Neat and Nicholas Stavri and "Making the Art World More Accessible" with Huma Kabakci and Lottie Leseberg Smith.
The art scene in London is filled with safe art that functions perfectly as home decor, polished floors of white galleries, long exhibition texts with the names of the prestigious universities where the exhibited artists studied and gallery employees who say that the number of people interested in a given work is long...
This world is repetitive and detached from the reality of most creative participants who dare to work tirelessly in often low-paid places and spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds a month on their art. Everything because they have the courage to be different, to be themselves, to create pieces that move the audience and speak about things that most of us are afraid of.
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For the Meat Market project, each of these artists was invited to prepare anything they wanted. Some will show works that were never exhibited because they were "too bold", some will come back to ideas they didn't have time to develop earlier, and others will experiment with a display or invite the audience to make something together.
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The project is an invitation to openly talk about things we find problematic in the art world. It is proof that there is space for every type of art, even if you can't sell it.