Summer of Stock!!

Here's a small representative selection of just some of SHOP's new summer stock. SHOP has men's shirts - long and short sleeved - men's tees, women's jersey tops, women's handbags and homeware!

Get SHOPping.

Turn on, JUNE-in, drop out!

Summer's officially here! Who wants to be indoors then? Not us, that's fo'sho. To that end, this month SHOP has concocted some SHOP events that you can get involved with not matter where you may happen to be, you don't even have to be within a light year of SHOP. How's that for considerate? Read on to find out more...

A Tale from SHOP

This week at SHOP, a keen-couple came in looking for a shop event that happened exactly one year ago. Sadly, they were an entire year late for it. The lesson you should take from this tale is that if you want to get involved in a shop event, then you shouldn't wait a year, cus you will be a
year too late.


NEWS

SUNDAY GIRLS AND BOYS NO MORE

We managed to frighten away our volunteers after a mere three Sundays of opening! That's quite an achievement. More news to follow on this next month...

NEW STOCK!

Hitting SHOP next week will be a massive load of men's shirts and tee shirts all ready to kit you out for the summer. Women are not to be forgotten either, as the women's department will also be receiving some summer tops to be proud of.

EVENTS

Arts Quarter Farmer's Market
Friday June 3rd 11am - 3pm

Meet and salute local food and drink suppliers and producers in the Sugar House at Hotel du Vin.

http://www.hotelduvin.com


Back Then
Saturday June 4rd – Friday June 11th



Group exhibition by:
Ross Golding
Tim Ulewicz
Ross Lovelock
Sam Ulewicz

Drawing from past inspirations amd nostalgia, a series of new work from four Bristol artists.

http://www.timulewicz.com

http://bumtapes.blogspot.com



Exhibiton by Aliah Malik
Monday 13th June – Thursday 23rd June



Artist Aliah Malik takes over the artspace in her first solo exhibition.

http://xliax-my.blogspot.com/


Record Club
Tuesday 28th June - 7:30pm – 10pm

The Record Club aim of the night is to play 2 or 3 long play records and to really appreciate the music. These records might be old classics, forgotten gems or brand spanking new. The records are usually nominated by the people in the club and voted on in the week before the night.

http://recordclub.posterous.com/the-first-one-24th-february

http://twitter.com/record_club

You can attend from 7:30pm and the first record is at 8.00pm. Feel free to bring some nibbles and drinks along.



VirtualSHOP

Right then, this is where you can get involved with SHOP and SHOP events but without all that old-fashioned 'actually having to be there' stuff! Separate togetherness is what SHOP and Woody Allen like to call it.

We're going to ease you in with just one this month, but look out for more as the months progress...

Thursday 9th
SECRET CITIES

You know when you wander around and you see something that you think only you have noticed? It could be because it's unusual, puzzling, or because it's beautiful, but it kind of becomes 'your thing'? Well, we want you to take some picures and share them with us.

We'll starts you off with a SHOP example from something we submitted to a friend's website a while back:

http://www.boyohboy.org/loved/secret-cities/

So get thinking and then on the 9th, get snapping with the knowledge that there are up 721 other Shop Club members wandering about across the world doing exactly the same thing.

Then, send your anonymous contribution to hello@shoptheshop.co.uk with the subject line: 'my secret' and we'll do something special with them.

Recent exhibitions round up.

SHOP has seen three exhibitons in the last month all with very different themes and styles.

The start of the month saw the University of Bristol Photographic Society showing their varied and exceptional end of year competition. Lots of people commented on the work and feedback from visitors was very positive for the group show.

The second exhibition brought 'Telephone Tin Cans' by Laura Taylor to the artspace. Briefly popping up from London to install it and then popping back to take it down was all we saw of the artist herself. Her work however lived with us for a week and again was well received by those venturing in. The balloons provided endless entertainment for a few aswell.

Finally, current exhibition 'Tales from an Urban Wonderland' by Bristol based artist Alex Rankin has already made plenty of sales and after a packed out private view has the promise of more visitors to coming through the door on the last day on Saturday.

The best news is we have lots more exhibitions over the coming months!

NEW HOMEWARES!

SHOP has been blessed with a gift from the vintage-Gods in the form of many new homewares! Including a very pretty and rather intriguing 50s kitchen cabinet which used to house a wringer...

Here's some picks of our new haul...

Various colourful goodies

Storage jars - in big AND small sizes!

Pretty blue cups

The instructions for the 'wringer'

Flip-top!

The innards

Brett spying on the cupboard... He wants it for hisself!

In all its glory...

70s glass lampshades and some 70s tumblers

Picnic basket! Mmmmm picnics...

Intriguing bamboo-look planter from 60s St Michael

The classic way to store eggs!

Super shiny Sona tea and coffee server

Ssssshhhh...

We can finally reveal the secret we had to keep under wraps for weeks...Internet perverts may be dissapointed but you shouldn't have such dirty minds.

Yesterday SHOP hosted the fourth day of the Mayfest event 'The Fortnight Project'. A little corner of our little SHOP was turned into a virtual pod for an operatic filmic world of fantasy. The offcial record of the event is available to view here...

http://www.fortnightproject.com/the-trail/day-four/

Thank you to Gillian for choosing us for a venue. We hope the very exciting project proves to be a great success!

We Robot!

Saturday just gone, SHOP teamed up with Tenderfoot to launch a new world! Oh yes, you read correctly. As part of For The Love of It's Pay it Forward Week of events, we created a WorkSHOP called 'We Robot'.

This consisted of turning an inanimate pile of cardboard into a new robot world complete with robots to populate it. It was kinda like a comment on community and social-inclusion, yah? But mostly it was just loads of fun.

Here's some pics of what we managed to create:

BEFORE

We started by creating a world for the new robots to live in. This is the robo-suspension bridge and a mercury river with mechanical fish.

Here's a city vista: robo-prison (for naughty robots!), tourist attractions like the Robo-Eye and aspirational city-living studio apartments for robo-yuppies.

The first robot we gave birth to was a pussikins, as we thought the first humanoid robot would be lonely until we managed to build another. Here is robo-kitty and her new owner Brettbot.

Following suprisingly conventional societal norms for a brand new world, we then made Brettbot a Girlbot and they immediately fell in love, probably in no small part due to the fact they were the only two people on the robo-planet (except robo-kitty, but let's not go down that route).

Brettbot then had to be furnished with employment and so we gave him a job at SHOP. Being a Community Interest Company includes members of the community who are robots as well as human. We're like that.


Brettbot then expressed a need to complain about his girlfirend and sit on the stoop with another bot, so we created Botandy for him to drink beer and scratch his nuts with (gedddit?! Nuts...)

After that, all was left was to create a belief system, as robo-kitt, girlbots 1 & 2 and Botandy all began to express existential angst. So we made a totem pole.

And here we are! The creators of the new world! All bow to our mightiness! From L- R robo-kitty, Botandy, girlbot and girlbot (in robo world women are interchangeable because to the male robots they are disposible commodities - strange how that happened again) and Brettbot.

May the SHOP force be with you this month!

SHOP is great - AFFIRMATIVE! The last event of April was an event with Tenderfoot called 'We Robot' - in a nutshell, making robots and robot accessories out of a shed-load of cardboard, pictured above. It was so much fun we larfed our shoppy-socks off check the blog shortly to see what we did with all that cardboard and have a little looky at this vid to whet your appetite in the meantime!

NEWS

SUNDAY GIRLS AND BOYS
SHOP is continuing unabashed with its 7 days a week opening! Our lovely volunteers Leila and Asa will soon be joined by three more equally lovely helpers. If you would like to sign up to be a SHOP volunteer then get in touch :)

SHOP will be open every Sunday from 12-4pm through May. Now that's a perfect tonic to the post Bank Holiday blues if ever we've heard one.

SSSSSSSHHHHHHHHH...
This is so top secret that this newsletter has been fitted with a self destruct device as assurance, even though we aren't allowed to mention the secret anyway. Just to let you know we have a big secret event happening at SHOP in May. Some of you might be involved but you don't even know it yet.

EVENTS

Christmas Steps Artisan Market
Saturday 7th May – 11am – 4pm
This monthly market runs every first Saturday of the month throughout the year. You can expect the wonderful teetering charm of the artisan stalls and the same high standard of beautiful crafts and wares as always, as well as the lovely shops and cafes surrounding the market.

To book a stall email:
christmasstepsartsquarter@yahoo.co.uk

FFI:
www.christmasstepsartisanmarket.blogspot.com

UBU Photography Society Exhibition
Tuesday May 3rd – Saturday May 7th
Members of the society group exhibition. Photographs displayed will include those voted best in the society annual competition and from the year of workshops and trips.

Telephone Tin Cans
Exhibiton by Laura Taylor
Monday 9th May – Saturday 14th May
Artist Laura Taylor takes over the artspace in the second week of May.

http://www.laura-taylor.co.uk

37th chamber film night
Saturday 14th May – 7.30pm onwards – £2
The regular 37th Chamber Film Night at SHOP - expect the usual grindhouse and kung-fu classics from these Arts Space regulars. Look out for their new Zine coming soon too!

FFI: Search ‘37th Chamber’ on Facebook

Tales From An Urban Wonderland
An exhibition of photographs by Bristol photographer Alex Rankin.
Monday 16th May – Saturday 21st May

The exhibition features work from an ongoing project that seeks to portray the urban landscape from an abstract perspective. The images aim to capture colours, textures and shapes that are encountered within urban environments while also exploring the mood and atmosphere that can be found within neglected or overlooked spaces.

For more info see:

http://urbanplaygrounds.viewbook.com

Record Club
Tuesday 24th May - 7:30pm – 10pm
The aim of the night is to play 2 or 3 long play records and to really appreciate the music. These records might be old classics, forgotten gems or brand spanking new. The records are usually nominated by the people in the club (via a comment on the blog or twitter account) and voted on
in the week before the night.

SHOP will be open at 7:30 and we’ll aim to start playing the first record at eight. Feel free to bring some nibbles and drinks along.

http://recordclub.posterous.com/