Pen Pal Pears NEWS!!!!

Thank you to all who applied for the Pen Pal Pears group show. We were knocked out by the huge amount of submissions we received for the show. We had set aside a weekend to go through all the artists work thinking it would take just a few hours but how wrong we were. 
We had planned on pulling the selected artists names from a hat at random to make the pairs for the show but once we received all the submissions after the deadline we realised that this would have complicated the show and not made the pairings as successful. We were able to pair artists from other countries who compliment each other in the mediums they work. Photographers with graphic illustrators, poets with musicians, tattoo artists with comic artists, painters with writers, conceptual artists with delicate hand craft artists and so on and so on. This process of matching up each artists by their work took us days but it was so exciting and uplifting but also tough as we had to say no to a lot of the artists who applied. We are so grateful to those artist who replied saying they would stay in touch with the gallery and will be down to the show on the opening night. Damn you nice artists making us feel even more guilty!!! 
The show was very nearly cancelled as was the gallery just after the deadline of the submissions. We had a huge fire in the floor shop that is in the same building as the gallery. The fire service were incredible and kicked the living shit out of the fire and killed it before it gutted the building. The gallery sustained some smoke damage and we are without electricity and heat and there is a big clean up to be done. We were about to cancel the group show and all other shows booked in this summer but to hell with that. Nothing a weekend, some good friends, a few beers and some serious elbow grease won't fix. We will have the gallery up and going in a few weeks hopefully.  


We picked 60 artists out of nearly 200 who applied. This 60 were put into 30 pairs. These 30 artists are the Pen Pal Pears. We will not be releasing the names of the artists or pairs as we do not want any of them to know who was paired with who until the opening night of the show in July. 


By now all the Pen Pals should have revived their letters revealing their chosen Pen Pal Pear so if you have get cracking and stay in touch with us if you need anything or need to know about size as the gallery is small. To anyone who has not yet received their Pen Pal or an email to say why please email us and we will sort it out.