For anyone who missed the last issue of The Mighty Whistler – and really, why would you do that? – there’s a new outdoor gallery in town, The Tat Modern. 

Now whereas most galleries have art as regular, ongoing fixtures, some rather peculiar and fascinating activity has been taking place with art fairies in the night. 

In the last few weeks, I have seen (to name but a few) the arrival and disappearance of a religious cross, a mirrored turtle, an arty toilet seat, a horse portrait, a square of Anchor butter and last but by no means least a chandelier lampshade.  

My initial suspicions were that someone might plonk a street cone on Lieutenant Landfill’s head, but I didn’t expect such a high level of interactive art, wrapped around the mysteries of arriving and disappearing. 

The quickest item to arrive then go, was a found lamp, with above mentioned lampshade, the porcelain vase was taken in the blink of an eye, whereas the upcycled revamped shade was left on the pavement.  

A thought ran through my head. I can’t  even give my art away. At which point an art buyer, who once sacrificed his entire classics art collection, by placing it back into auction, appeared like a pixie, from nowhere. He said when you hit a certain age and you’re surrounded by classics, your living room just feels like a musty museum. So he’s transitioned to contemporary art for a vibrant colour hit and loves auction houses. I gave him a small piece of dotty art from the Tat Modern and after telling me he still buys gold snuff boxes, he scuttled off into the streets of Brighton.  

As this encounter happened on St Patrick’s Day and to celebrate, I had a Guinness or two in the Cresent, while wearing my shiny gold shoes that light up in neon blue on the base. 

All of this, art pokery has been in the lead up to my Tat Modern fashion show, for a camera shoot I’ve been considering, using a cool established technique called hyperlapse, where the finished cut, gives off the feel of you floating along a street.  I decided to do a test run back at TM HQ and gathered all my arty upcycled fashion jackets into a robust mountain climbing zip up case and once again donned my clown shows to head across Montpelier Rd to Temple Gardens.  

I unloaded my collection of Royal Academy and Harper’s BAZAAR magazines for an eclectic backdrop, then proceeded to take photographs of myself walking in a fashion walk manner and after almost falling sideways inbetween two parked cars, I met an Irish chap, who started taking photos of me in various poses, with the aim of showing them to his painting and decorating brother, as he may want to purchase one of my Artist Dotty jackets. 

We concluded the conversation by saying lampshades may really work as fashion hats. So if you see a few shady looking people in Brighton, you know where you heard it first.  

Artist Dotty was talking to Matt Whistler