Slancha squeezes scruffy Fiat 126 into London gallery for The Car Boot Sale exhibition
UK gallery Slancha brought together 16 emerging designers from across the country to capture the spirit of car boot sales as part of its latest show, featuring products made from offcuts, found objects and flea market bargains.
Half of the pieces in The Car Boot Sale exhibition, which took place at Formd gallery in Shoreditch as part of London Design Festival, came from Slancha's existing roster of early-career designers.
The other half founders Findlay MacDonald and Harvey Everson sourced entirely via an open call, in a bid to democratise participation.
"Space is at a premium here," MacDonald told Dezeen. "And we had the opportunity to partner with Formd to own the space and be able to put on a show of a reasonable scale that people might not necessarily get into otherwise."
"So we thought it was a great opportunity to start showing work from people we hadn't worked with before and showcase people that might not really have the opportunity to work with galleries and to be shown in a great space in London."
The idea of theming the exhibition around a car boot sale was born from this same desire for inclusivity, allowing Slancha to show a broad range of work from a broad range of disciplines.
"Growing up, we both loved going to car boot sales with our family," MacDonald explained. "And we thought it was a great way of showing an eclectic mix of work that can all work together in its own harmonious way."
"It's also quite an emotive thing for a lot of people," he added. "So we thought it would be a great way of encouraging rough and ready ways of making work, as well as translating the memories that people have."
Much like a real car boot, the exhibition was set up around a cherry-red Fiat 126, which had to be carefully squeezed into the gallery by removing the building's door and its frame.
Formd founder Lewis Miles managed to procure the vehicle via eBay only the day before the opening, after the four-by-four originally intended for the purpose got stuck three-quarters of the way through the door.
Throughout the show, pieces from 16 different designers were presented in small assemblages, grouped together on carpets, shelves, tables and crates.
Scottish designer Oliver Spendley was among several contributors who chose to work with found materials, carving rudimentary ashtrays out of stones he collected in the Highlands, while Thomas Wheller presented an "instinctively carved" tray made from reclaimed Scandinavian pine.
Others went straight to the source and scoured car boot sales for viable materials. Pewter tankards and other paraphernalia were melted down to form a series of ashtrays by London designer This Is Byron, and Newcastle's James Stephenson turned unwanted cutlery into wall hooks and a small tray shaped like a photorealistic oyster.
South Korean duo Studio EastxEast shared their graduation project from Central Saint Martins – a multi-functional furniture piece, Frankenstein-ed together from different flea market finds, that can function as a chair, table and shelf.
Manchester export Jake Robertson worked instead with his own offcuts to create the Pendant Lamp with Holes, as well as fashioning a chair from standard aluminium bars and leftover valchromat.
Similarly, Glasgow jewellery designer Militsa Milenkova used a hydraulic press to turn snippets of aluminium into tea light holders and London-based Emilia Tombolesi blow-torched scrap copper to create a patinated lamp.
Instead of using reclaimed materials, many of the wooden pieces in The Car Boot Sale exhibition focused on revealing the hidden histories of an object by laying bare its manufacturing.
Among them were sculptural lathe-turned pieces by Marc Sweeney and George Richardson, whose Knuck shelf retains the square profile of its standard timber lengths at key joining points.
Elsewhere, design duo Korrom hand-turned Scottish sycamore to create a series of candle holders informed by antique spindle legs and crafted psychedelic red Ettore Sottsass veneer into a geometric lamp.
Other designers featured in the exhibition include Iona McVean, By Jamps, By George Exon, Emmely Elgersma, James Grossman and Adit Abhey Poonia.
The Car Boot Sale was part of a growing presence of emerging designers at this year's London Design Festival, in lieu of big brands announcing major launches.
Among the highlights was Max Radford Gallery's much-lauded Grain Pile show in Clerkenwell Fire Station and the Mirroring Dialogue exhibition, which spotlighted design talent from London's African diaspora.
The Car Boot Sale was on show from 16 to 21 September as part of the London Design Festival. See Dezeen Events Guide for more design events and exhibitions around the world.
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