Yinka Shonibare cards up for sale

Here's a link to a couple of Yinka Shonibare cards for sale next month at Dreweatt Neate.  This is the second time these cards have come up for auction, the first time they failed to sell and the estimate has been reduced to £600-£800 for the 2.

Dates for RCA Secret 2014 revealed

The college has revealed the dates for next year's RCA Secret sale.  It's in March again with the exhibition opening on 13 March 2014 and the sale being on Saturday 22 March 2014.  An exciting date for your diary then!  The sale is also named after its sponsor - Stewarts Law RCA secret.

All details on the college's website for the sale.  

November is the cruelest month

This year anyway.  Normally by this stage preparations would begin in earnest, research done, art fairs coming up, twitter scoured for eagerly awaited news.  Hey ho, a few more months to go.  Lots of things to do art wise this month so I may see some of you at the various fairs and stuff in London.

Did you see the Emin card which went under the hammer at Christies in September?  I have to confess this one completely passed me by.

Rego card for sale too

A Paula rego card from 2005 is also for sale at
Bonhams tomorrow.

5 RCA Secret 2013 go under the hammer

No less than 5 RCA Secret 2013 postcards are going under the hammer at Bloomsburys auctioneers tomorrow.

RCA Secret 2013 postcards at Bloomsbury, auction on Thursday 27th June at 2pm

134. John Baldessari (b.1931) Was It Worth It? I Suppose So.
two unique rubber stamp prints on postcard, 2013, each signed in blue
ball-point pen verso, produced to raise funds for the Royal College of
Art, London, as part of the RCA secret, on wove paper, with full
margins,
each sheet 147 x 105 mm (5 3/4 x 4 1/8 in)
£1000 – £1500
auction link


248. Yinka Shonibare (b.1962) Untitled 1 & 2
two unique pen and ink with applied gold leaf and collage of printed
fabric on postcard, 2013, each signed in black felt-tip pen verso,
produced to raise funds for the Royal College of Art, London, as part of
the RCA secret, on wove paper, with full margins,
each sheet 147 x 105 mm (5 3/4 x 4 1/8 in)
£800 – £1200
auction link

262. Lawrence Weiner (b.1940) Caught between Ships Passing in the Night
unique rubber stamp print with paper collage and hand-colouring in red
crayon and green watercolour, 2013, signed in black ink verso, produced
to raise funds for the Royal College of Art, London, as part of the RCA
secret, on wove paper, with full margins,
sheet 147 x 105 mm (5 3/4 x 4 1/8 in)
£1000 – £1500
auction link

Raffle open for Oli Postcards

The raffle is now open for first 30 places in the virtual queue.  All the details below

Sale date: Friday 21st June 2013, 6.30-8.30pm
Venue: Westminster School, London SW1P 3PB

Oli Bennett Charitable Trust Anonymous Art Fair

Nearest tube: St. James’s Park or Westminster.

 

The school is just south of Westminster Abbey.

 

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/map.srf?X=530021&Y=179357&A=Y&Z=110

If you wish to attend the sale please email us - olipostcards@btinternet.com to be put on the guest list.  Please note that places are limited are the night of the sale.  Please note that since this is a central london school in term time security is tight.  You will not be admitted unless you are on the guest list. 

The cost of the cards this year is £40.

As last year we will be holding a raffle for the top 30 places in a virtual queue so that whether you are able to attend the sale or not you will still have a chance of buying the cards you would like to buy.  Raffle tickets are £1 each and you can buy a maximum of 20. 

The raffle is now live.  Please visit
http://www.justgiving.com/olipostcards2013

To make your donation.  Here is a timeline for the raffle:

15 June 2013 - Raffle opens
6pm on 18 June 2013 Raffle closes.
Evening of 18 June 2013 - Winners notified
End of 19 June 2013 - deadlines for supplying raffle selections and making payment for cards (£40 each)
20 June 2013 - raffle winners are informed which cards they have purchased.

VERY IMPORTANT - once you have made your donation please email olipostcards@btinternet.com stating the name under which you donated and the amount. For some reason Justgiving no longer provide us with the email address of the payee, even if you tick the box that says you are happy to share that. IF YOU DON’T EMAIL US YOU WON’T BE IN THE RAFFLE. Many many thanks

All remaining cards not sold in the raffle will be sold on the night of the sale.  Any remaining cards after the evening sale will be advertised for sale on this site on a first come first served basis.

Contributor news for Oli Postcards

I'm pleased to announce the following confirmed contributors to Oli Postcards this year. Please note contributors are only confirmed when we have the postcards in hand, there are plenty more exciting contributors promised...

Sir Peter Blake
Anita Klein
Paul Benjamins
Guy Denning
Remi Rough
Adam Bridgland
Antony "ABC" Collings
Bram
Florin Ungureanu
Ida Taavitsainen
Eeva Rinne
Petra Semerdjiev
TRXTR
Wattts
Caroline Payne
Bram
Zibi
Boon
ANX

And many others

Keep your eyes peeled to the website for more info.

Sneaky peak of some Oli Postcards

Here is a sneaky peak of some of the first Oli Postcards received!  Keep your eyes peeled here for more news and remember it is not too late for artists to contribute, just email olipostcards@btinternet.com 

Oli Postcards is Back!

Yes I've been persuaded to do it all again. The Oli Bennett charitable trust will be running a secret art postcard sale that bears a passing resemblance to the RCA secret sale....

Last time we ran the sale it was a raging success, raising over £8000 and generating a lot of publicity for the charity and the artists involved.

All the postcards from that sale can still be viewed on the website www.olipostcards.com until 31st May. We had donations from, amongst many others, DFace, Sir Peter Blake, Candice Tripp, Anita Klein, Remi rough and Josie McCoy and actors Eddie Redmayne and Clemency Burton-Hill.

This time the sale will be on 21st June 2013.

If there are artists reading this who would like to donate a postcard or three then please email me your name and address to:

olipostcards@btinternet.com

I'll will get a pack sent out to you.

Thanks for reading!  The above is a sneak peak of one of the first cards donated!

The meaning of life....

I did love these cards by friend of the blog and regular RCA Secret contributor James R Ford.

My RCA Secret 2013

I waited, it rained.  I queued, it froze.  I shivered it snowed. 

I've been coming to RCA Secret for around 13 years now but never have experienced such cold in the queue.  When the college moved the sale from November 2012 to March 2013 I was very disappointed that there would be no sale in 2012 but consoled myself with the certainty that it was bound to be warmer in the queue than in late November.  How wrong I was.

But more of that later.   Preparations for the sale were, perhaps in comparison with previous years, a little muted.  There didn't seem to be as much media coverage before, and not quite as many exciting contributors to get everyone talking in advance of the sale.  Nevertheless by the time the college released the cards on a thursday morning (after some problems with the website) I was excited, as I guess were many of the readers of this blog.

The new venue was, there is no doubt, a gem.  It's only drawback, being a long way from any tube, was more than made up for the contemporary feel of the venue and the natural light on the cards, even on a very grey day in March.  I'd been with the family as usual on the Sunday to check out the cards in the flesh and to buy raffle tickets.  The kids made a list in the hope that they might be drawn in the raffle that year as well.  The next few days were spend eagerly awaiting the sale date.

I turned up for the sale queue around 8am on Friday.  Already there were, I guess, around 15 tents in front of me, perhaps more.  I spotted a few old friends from previous years queues and renewed acquaintance as we waited for the doors to open for the last day's viewing.  Once opened everyone piled into the sale room to look at the cards and keep warm, it was already bitterly cold.  A happy day was spent viewing cards and checking on the tent to make sure it hadn't blown away in the seemingly gale force wind that was whipping round the courtyard where the tents were located.

Everyone was talking about the where the cards by Rego and Opie were hidden.  As this years big contributors to the sale they were the big "finds" and were, unlike previous years contributions from those artists, tough nuts to crack.  Of course there were many other quality offerings on display and we discussed the merits of numerous cards as we came to them.  Tipping out time came at 6pm and we went into the wilds of rainswept Battersea.  By that stage the courtyard where the queue was located resembled a scene from Gandhi as tents and people were everyone, milling around in little groups, anxiously clutching their mobile phones in their un-gloved and hence virtually frost bitten hands.  Alas no winning raffle call for me although Adam, one of my regular queue friends did get the call and quickly packed up his tent to go home. 

After a quick spot of food and some fortifying whisky I settled down for the night.  It was tough, I really do take my hat off to those rough sleepers on London's streets.  I have the luxury of a tent, sleeping bag, thermals, money in my pocket and the knowledge I can go home in 12 hours, how they do it day after day is simply beyond me.  I didn't sleep much.  It was too cold and wet and the constant drip dripping of water from my tent and the noise from the nightclub next door to the college put paid to any ideas of a peaceful night.  After a couple of hours of tossing and turning I got up and had a chat with some old timers of the sale and some newbies, exchanging advice and guidance and (wrongly it turned out) confidently advising what in my view was the Margaret Calvert contribution - sorry!

Eventually, finally, after a seemingly interminable wait, daybreak came.  And with it the snow, starting softly but eventually coming down in great white drifts, landing on our already wet clothes.  "Rather snow than rain" said a neighbour and I couldn't disagree.

The inevitable queue barger turned up, resolute in his refusal to see logic and common sense, determined that he had a god given right to push in past people who had been queuing for 4 days.  Predictably he got told by security to go, and eventually did, arms crossed and huffy.  Then after a few more minutes where my feet seemed to part company with my body we were finally into the warmth of the college, along a long corridor and into the sale room where the usual crossing off of card numbers from our lists began in earnest.  Within a few moment I was there at the front of the queue, with the majority of my first choices already sold.  Four cards purchased then into the sale room where the cards were collected.  And so I got:

I got a card by Ron Fuller who was a contemporary of David Hockney at the RCA. The card is a photo of Hockney in a waistcoat taken by Fuller. I'm very pleased with it as it is a piece of art history, and may write more about this later.

I also got an Alan Kitching and a Ryan Mosley. My fourth card was a beautiful painting. I had no idea who it was by when I bought it and it is by Zadie Xa, an first year fine art student at the college.  I am delighted with my purchases which will be framed and go on one of the already art laden walls in my home. 

Would I do it again, you betcha, although I wasn't saying that until I'd thawed! 

Almost forgot

This Daily Mail article, worth a read if nothing else for the comments underneath which are quite hilarious.

How was it for you?

So RCA secret ends for another year.  Did you enjoy it?  I will, once fully thawed out and recovered, do my usual post about how it was for me.  But in the meantime here is a link to a few stories about the sale:

Firstly the telegraph cover the sale here.

Secondly here is a story by BBC London news.

Here is a piece in the standard.

And this is an ITV interview with Asif Kapadia, the director of Senna, who not only contributed to the show but also queued to buy postcards himself.

Finally the author of the artists has now been revealed on the college's website.  If you did get a card that you love why not email the artist and tell them?  I'm sure they would love to hear from you.

Speak soon...

See you tomorrow

Hope to see you in the queue tomorrow or the sale on Saturday.  In the meantime a few articles were published today.


Firstly there was something in the Standard about the queue.  Hello Lee and Harvey!

Secondly there was an article in Elle with a chance to win the 51st place in the queue.

Finally a short article by yours truly in the New Winchester Review.

Have fun finishing your list and best of luck to the queuer's tonight.  It's bitterly cold.

Excited yet?

Whose excited now? Not long to go. Are we seeing things clearer now?

Brain fade

Do you feel like the picture? Lists, numbers, oils, acrylics, pencils, pen and ink. Birds, dogs, cats, rats, mice, hamsters. Statues, old men, old women, children with tattoos, pregnant women. After a while you can get brain fade.

Easy like Sunday morning

I went along for the first view of the cards in the flesh this morning and had a very pleasant few hours looking at them and inevitably catching up with a few old queueing friends along the way.

The new venue is great, really light and airy and very contemporary. The cards displayed on the street side in particular really benefited from the extra light provided by the huge windows, even on a dull day such as today.

Of course as always the cards look so much better in the flesh and there's quite a few that I'm beginning to fall for, although no one card this year that is an absolute stand out.

The show was pretty busy when I was there, at least 20 people on arrival just after opening and roughly 3 times that once we'd left.

Facilities in the local area are considerably better than the Kensington site with a number of restaurants and bars close by and a co-op supermarket virtually on site.

No tents yet and no idea where the queue will form, guess we will get a better idea of that next week. Have fun to all viewing.

Emin a contributor?

The metro is reporting this morning that Tracey Emin has contributed to the sale.  Check out hard copies for details as it isn't on their website.  All will be revealed in just a few hours time. 

Have fun!

Well, it's been a busy day press wise with RCA secret.  The college held a press viewing and it has certainly generated a lot of interest. 

First up there were some more cards featured in Time Out this morning.

Next there was a great article in the guardian featuring interviews with Maggi Hambling, Pete Fowler and David Bailey.

The telegraph also featured some great photos of the gallery and some of the cards.

And finally the website has been updated to include some FAQ's and an essay about the sale.

Have fun reading through all these.  Maybe see some of you at the viewing this weekend.

Pictures of the Dyson building

Another quiet day on the news front, sure to be press articles next week though.  In the meantime check out this great blog post about the Dyson Building where RCA Secret will be hosted this year.