Brooklyn Galleries are in the House(boat) on the Hudson

From the moment you jog across the roaring West Side Highway and dodge the racing rollerblader lane

to step onto the lurching dock, the Fountain Art Fair let’s you know that it’s not going to be a typical ride. In it’s third year, the unofficial Anti-Armory floating fair on Pier 66 features independent and non-traditional and street artists and their works.

Ahoy, Matey!

9 galleries are participating this year, including a Glowlab fund-raising mini-gallery that’s helping street artist Swoon mount a new floating spectacular exhibit in the sea, this time it will navigate the Adriatic Sea from the Karst region of Slovenia to Venice, Italy in May of 2009.  Artist Greg Haberny takes over the entire McCaig Welles booth with a cacophonic explosion of patriotic symbolism and corporate indictments in a decidedly not tongue-in-cheek installation called “The Donkey Party Game”. And AdHoc uses their wallspaces to spread the love of color, pattern, symbols and the police state with floor to ceiling installations done by Peripheral Media Projects (PMP).

Sure to entertain, the fair, mounted on a floating barge with an insecure-looking infrastructure, is by turns perplexing and powerful, frank and beguiling… just what you might expect from places that favor the art renegades.

Artists like Maya Hayuk, Royce Bannon, and infinity are part of the Swoon flotilla benefit. Raffle tickets are being sold to win a custom Swoon piece. (photo Steven P. Harrington)

The Donkey Party Game installation really rocks the houseboat. Artist Greg Haberny (photo Steven P. Harrington

Riot police, Crowns, Purple Heads... the unusual fair (Peripheral Media Projects) (photo Steven P. Harrington)

For more on Fountain take a look at NY1’s local news story

Fountain Art Fair

Participating Galleries

Ad Hoc Art – Brooklyn
Definition Gallery – Baltimore
Front Room – Brooklyn
Glowlab – New York
Leo Kesting – New York
McCaig-Welles – Brooklyn
Soundwalk – New York
Stuart Shepherd – New Zealand
Vagabond Gallery – New York