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Saturday 3 October 2009

Seriously annoyed.

Remember a few months ago when I said the oh so amazing Artworks Gallery in Ouseburn, Newcastle contacted me as they wanted my jewellery in their Shop Boutique? I was so excited, I jumped to it, made loads of goodies, took them through and was told to ring them in a few months to find out about what had sold, and to recieve my payment. Well, about 2 weeks ago I received an email from them saying they were closing down and "sorry for the inconvenience". In their email they said they were open on 3 days during certain times for collection of artwork. Well, due to working a million hours a week I couldnt get through on these days, so I asked my placement lady, Cassandra Harrison if she could pick mine up, along with hers. She went along on the Sat and was faced with a locked door due to changed locks. Okay, so why did they tell people to collect their stuff if they couldnt open the building for the artists? Turns out the exceptionally talented (yeah right) Matt Forster, who seemed to run/own the gallery hadnt been paying his rent for the building, so the council shut him down. Nice.
Fast forward to this week, and after sending a few emails to the "info" at the artworks gallery requesting some help on how to retrieve my items, AND my money they owe me for selling my items they finally decided to reply with a useless email saying they would look into it. Of course they will, and the other god knows how many angry artists they have screwed over. Turns out everyones stuff had been siezed by bailiffs and are being auctioned to repay the money Matt owes for rent.
Cassandra has been great, keeping me up to date with everything, and the latest was that she was told she could go to the auction house and retrieve her stuff, mine, and others that live down south etc. She said mine wasnt there though. So I now have to accept my goods have either been stolen, sold or lost. I know my stuff wasnt worth as much as others (one woman had work worth £40,000) in there, but its the principal of the situation. People worked really hard on their stuff, handed it over expecting to make money, not lose alot of money. To top it off apparently 10 days before he closed down the infamous Matt Forster registered a new company in Hexham called MJ Forster Gallery Limited. I suspect the same thing will happen again with this gallery if he runs it. Hopefully someone will have the sense to stop him from getting away with it again though.

To read more about this fantastic guy, check out the photography pages and The Journal.

On a lighter note, I have had a great week off relaxing and getting my health back to normal, and will be updating the shop with new goodies next week so stay tuned!

2 comments:

  1. Wow, that really sucks. Maybe you can go to the company that seized everything and tell them what happened to you, and see if you can get your stuff back, or at least get some money if the stuff is sold off.

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  2. I was thinking of doing that, but since Cassandra went and looked for it at the auction house and she couldnt find it I have a feeling its long gone and I dont know who (if they were sold on) pocketed the money :( I think Ill have to put this one down to lack of experience, Im definately never doing consignment again!!lol x

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