Saturday 23 August 2014

DECOREX JOHANNESBURG 2014

2 weeks ago, myself and a friend did a 3200km return road trip to exhibit at Decorex Johannesburg -  the largest interior design fair in Africa. All 5 halls at Gallagher Estate were used - 750 exhibitors and an expected +50 000 people to attend the show. The back seats of the SUV were removed and the space filled with a large selection of limited edition prints - mainly on hand-brushed aluminium sheets. We had booked a U-shaped, 16 linear metre stall in the Art Gallery and began setting up on the Tuesday before the opening on Wednesday. The show was to run for 5 days, with the first 3 being trade-focused days.
Hardly any room left for luggage
Empty stand at Decorex 2014 Johannesburg
The empty stand
It took us from 8 in the morning till 6 that evening to hang the 35 prints - much longer than we had expected.Eventually we were done and were very happy with the overall look of our "Instant Gallery".


Lining up the pictures for hanging
The first wall complete
Nearly done...
The finished stand at Decorex 2014 Johannesburg
At last and looking good
Mike Kaplan and some of his work at Decorex 2014 Johannesburg
Yours truly
One of the outside walls

Before leaving for Decorex, we made an appointment to visit Grand Provence where Trent, son of the late Everard Read, has an Art Gallery. Trent was away at the time, but his assistant was excited by our work and immediately chose 2 images - one of mine and one of Des' for display in the Gallery. We were thrilled by this as it gave a lot of credibility to our work. 
We received an overwhelming response from people - trade and public alike - they had never seen photographic prints on aluminium and the impact of the large prints - over 1.65 metres, had a huge impact. We sold 4 prints overall - 3 very large ones and were very happy seeing that this was the first time we had shown our work in public. What to us was even more important, were the contacts we made with interior designers, decorators and architects - hopefully this will prove to be really beneficial in the long term.