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On Friday we went to the LongPlaya charity auction at the See No Evil pop-up shop on Fairfax St in Bristol. For those who don’t know, See No Evil is an ‘art project of international standard’ on a pretty average-looking street in Bristol’s city centre. The artists use the buildings and walls as their canvas, making use of any available space to decorate the street with their individual street art styles. It’s pretty awesome, and they’ve turned an otherwise unremarkable street into one which you actually don’t mind walking down, and even sometimes make a diversion for.

It’s certainly one of the main attractions I want to show friends or family visiting Bristol!

This is one of the new pieces of work from this year, although annoyingly I didn’t take my camera down with me to the whole See No Evil day because I wasn’t really planning on staying out, as pretty much all of my mates were either busy/on stag do/planning weddings/etc etc! Anyway, the See No Evil website has a pretty awesome map of all the artists on the street and around the area, so if you’re in Bristol and have time to go for a bit of a wander, I thoroughly recommend going to Nelson St. Just remember your camera!

So on to the LongPlaya auction. My boyfriend told me about this on Friday after speaking to one of his clients, who was organising the event. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the event, and I wasn’t even sure what size/kind of artwork was on auction.

One of the pieces available at the auction

There were quite a few pieces to choose from, I really loved this piece (with the birds) by Dave Bain, but unfortunately we were beaten during the bidding for it. I found out later though that the couple who had beaten us in the bidding war had bought the piece for their unborn baby’s nursery, so I didn’t feel so bad about having lost it to them. Their baby is totally going to have weird dreams though! I would check out Dave’s website though, his work is amazing and really colourful, and especially if you like birds.

Dave Bain at Longplaya

Photo from the LongPlaya site

The main reason we were at the auction, however, was for Tony (my boyfriend) to look into getting a Squattie. For the uninitiated, these are angular and cuboid characters, created by the artist Matt Hitchcock. He does all sorts of characters, such as the Joker, Wallace & Gromit, Captain Jack to name but a few. We bid on one of (or maybe the) original Squattie, the one of Banksy.

Squattie at the auction

Can you see him, sitting on top of the counter? I have to say I was sceptical at first, in that I wasn’t sure where he would go in our flat and also whether he was my kind of thing. However, Tony was adamant this was the one to go for and convinced me that we’d be silly to go for anything else. Plus, he loved it!Sso the bidding war began. It ended up being between Tony and someone else he knew, and it got really, really tense towards the end of the bidding. In the end we won it, much to Tony’s disbelief, and mine to be honest! It was so exciting bidding in an auction, we’d both never done it before and I think we may have got a bit carried away…

In any case, I think we made Matt a very happy man (in the interest it all generated for his work – all the money for the pieces of art went to Charity) even though he confessed to Tony he was sad to see the little guy go. Matt sent me a photo to use on here (thanks Matt!) so that you can see in more detail what the Banksy squattie is all about:

I’ve been converted. He’s quite cute!!

It was a great night, and I loved seeing all the amazing variation in the art on display. Some of it wasn’t to my tastes, some of it was, but every piece in there caught your eye in some way.

Find out more about See No Evil, LongPlaya or Squatties 

❤

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