Freak Show

Beth: I went to London Art Fair last week, apart from looking at the art I spent a lot of time people watching. Through the snobbery of at least 90% of visitors at the fair, I was completely appalled at how much I felt out of place, even as an art student at the event. I felt I wasn't good enough and looked down on just because I didn't have the money for the overpriced work.

Art is something to enjoy. Why then was it just presented at the show at a price for people with the biggest bank account.

I think we should make our show fun.

I love the idea of the fairground, but why not take on the theme completely rather than it just being a vague connection between the pieces and making the audience try and guess the connection, make it completely obvious.

The work that you've looked at from the second and third years all fit into the idea of a Freak Show. We could take the existing idea of the Freak Show and make our art show a new version. By selecting works that are both fun and sinister, like the sewn together toys we can allow the audience to embrace the idea.

A freak show is an exhibition of rarities, "freaks of nature" — such as unusually tall or short humans, and people with both male and female secondary sexual characteristics or other extraordinary diseases and conditions — and performances that are expected to be shocking to the viewers. Heavily tattooed or pierced people have sometimes been seen in freak shows, as have fire-eating and sword-swallowing acts.

The Freak Show is already an existing exhibition of weird and wonderful things so it would be appropriate to make another exhibition from it.

Not only basing the work on that, we could engulf the carnival theme. Advertise the exhibition through posters for a Freak Show, perhaps not even letting on about it being about art, just letting people come to find out. We could have fake "Wanted" posters for other freaks.

Freak shows are fearful, perhaps we could have a dressed up clown just walking around the exhibition, not speaking to people - not distracting from the work but just silently walking around as if he belongs there..he could perhaps give out colourful balloons which would look fantastic to look in on from the outside with colourful balloons filling the room and each selected person taking a little of the exhibition home with them.

If not the clown idea, we could all dress the same, white shirt, black trousers, dickie bow and all wear the same clown masks like a performance art, almost like the "10 Embarrassed Men" at Frieze by Anneka Strom.

 Let me know what you think....Beth.