Weekend arts festival in Soho, London

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 Soho Fluorescent 2015 is the new open house arts festival running in the centre of London this weekend. The event will see 40 up-and-coming artists creating and exhibiting work in up to 12 unconventional venues across Soho.

The Soho Fluorescent festival has created a trail of venues – offices, shops, studios and other workspaces – across London’s most vibrant cultural quarter, showing work curated for the array of unusual exhibition spaces by Helen Ratcliffe and Alan Smith of Allenheads Contemporary Arts (www.acart.org.uk).The festival will be open to the public on Saturday 4and Sunday 5 July.

Featured artists include Alix Marie, who has just completed a residency at the V&A, Gabriele Dini, who recently undertook a research residency at Allenheads Contemporary Arts, Tim Shaw who for Fluorescent will be in residence at Zero One making a new sound installation in direct response to the architectural and spatial qualities of the venue, and Liz West who will create a site specific installation that mixes luminous colour and radiant light.

Soho Fluorescent is the initiative of Soho solicitors Simons Muirhead & Burton (http://www.smab.co.uk/).  Razi Mireskandari is the firm’s managing partner. He commented:

I was convinced that Soho businesses would embrace a new way of supporting and interacting with the arts, and the response we have had for our inaugural festival supports this. We will be putting great new art in workplaces across the area and then throwing the doors open to the public. The artists will benefit, Soho will benefit and we think the art loving public will have a great time exploring what’s on offer

Businesses which will be hosting Soho Fluorescent include Tapestry on Frith Street, a creative and media production agency which is not only providing design and print services to the project, but also created the new Fluorescent branding; construction consultants Leslie Clark on Dean St. (http://www.lclark.com/); and Zero One on Hopkins St., a creative production studio which is also offering studio and editing facilities. Soho Fluorescent will also be joined by The Photographers Gallery  which, in keeping with the Fluorescent ethos to support emerging artists, will be presenting its exhibition FRESHFACED & WILDEYED. More artists and venues will be announced shortly.

All the work exhibited during the festival is for sale, with artists receiving 70% of sale prices and the balance helping to support the future development of the event. Mireskandari explained:
 We are underwriting year one costs for Soho Fluorescent, but are confident that the festival will become self-sustaining in future years. It is another demonstration of what makes Soho special and why we should be fighting to keep it so.

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