Exhibition plans coming together both for getting work up to the venue and layout in the exhibition space. Other aspects to be worked out is how to manage the Drinks reception, with many of the artists coming and not knowing which clients will be coming so ordering wine, glasses and canapes is all down to intuitive guesswork!. Armed with nails, hammers, (no screws allowed), polyfilla, spirit-levels, sandpaper, pencils, tape measure etc, the unsung tools of the gallerist, hopefully all the work will be shown off to its best next week.

The gallery is a good-size space with a feeling of intimacy. I am not sure how much of the larger scale work we are going to be able to show in the space. One can plan a great deal beforehand but when 'the hang' actually takes place often works can be put out of balance when placed too near other works so much will be decided on the day. This makes it an exciting but somewhat nerve-racking situation. Another consideration is looking at the exhibition from the point of view of the visitor and potential buyer. If you are looking at two works by the same artist its not necessarily helpful to have them on different floors of the gallery. This will all require careful thought over the next 10 days regardless of all the other preparation that will be going on. Hopefully it will all pay off and loads of people from our mailing list will come, enjoy the work and decide to buy. The art market definitely seems to be picking up - what a relief!

Weird, blog of 10th has disappeared! We are just preparing for the Mixed Exhibition in Gallery 27, Cork Street where examples of the majority of artists will be on show. It will be great to have a show in a gallery rather than an art fair environment even though it will be tricky to hang such a wide range of work. We have decided to have a Drinks reception where many of the artists will be present. That gives them a chance to meet each other as well as specific clients and collectors. The difficult stage is yet to come, what to hang and where - looking forward to visiting the gallery again today to get a rough idea of how it will all look!

We are almost there with the new website http://www.foursquarearts.co.uk which will be launched tomorrow. Having worked on it day and night for the last couple of months with our great web designer John Liston of http://www.pipcreative.com its finally coming together. Packed full of new images, information, links to the Four Square FIlms, new images from our core stable of artists, new genres including showing public art, installation, music, a new Projects section showing recently completed commissions, expandable images and of course a link to the blog, facebook and twitter we look forward to hearing your comments to see how it can be improved further.

Ellen Bell and I had a really enjoyable meeting with the client yesterday who viewed several new pieces in advance of the Art London exhibition. Ellen Bell uses found ephemera in her work. Scouring second-hand bookshops, auctions, boot sales she gathers material from everyday life - maps, postage stamps, dictionaries, novels often dating back 60 or 70 years incorporating them into her artwork often creating intelligent, sensitive and darkly humorous narrative. Now that Ellen is studying for her PhD at Dartington she has given up teaching and will be making more pieces to finance her studies and to explore new themes. For an illuminating account of Ellen's creative ideas and inspiration, visit the Films section of the new website where you can watch the film Hard Words in which she talks about her work. This is the first in a series of artist portraits that we are currently making with the film-makers Last Bus. 

This blog will document the various activities of Four Square Fine Arts regarding the various projects that we are involved in, exhibitions that are being planned, art fairs where we will be exhibiting, news regarding artists etc. I have just returned from a 2-day  trip to Northern Germany, spending time chatting with Eberhard Ross in his studio looking at new work, discussing plans regarding his solo exhibition next year in May, choosing work for Art London coming up in a few weeks time 8th - 12th October. I also met a couple of new fantastic artists, Anne Berlit an amazing installation artist and Karoline Bröckel who specialises in drawing, currently represented by Galerie Werner Klein in Cologne.