Drawing The Violet Crab, part 6

Weaving past the sunlit drunks of Camden, I arrive at the gallery with an accessory I found, which will enhance someone else's wardrobe: a hat from Oxfam made in the shape of a spermatozoon with twinkly bits on.

Outside, James the photographer is faced with talking to me or a brick wall.

'Man up,' he says. 'Free yourself. And stop using that red paper.'

I peer out from under the weight of the four beds and four armchairs I've just put on Freecycle, the cobwebby garage and shed full of reproach down the A3, the three-ton Kenwood Chef with dough hook, the hat brush with 'HAT.' including the full stop spelt out in brown and white bristles, the eternally flat mother-of-pearl-inlaid iron-frame piano, all of which has to be disappeared next week along with the rest of the family silt and regret. Empty. Dead.

'Have you got some masking tape?' says James. 'You could stick some big sheets of paper on that wall.' 

I'm drawing the progress of The Violet Crab, a cabaret-themed exhibition directed by Than Hussein Clark at the David Roberts Art Foundation in Camden, which ends on 2 May. Subjects here are Jean Capeille, Seiriol Davies, Chiara Fumai, Celia Hempton, Zhana Ivanova, Ayumi LaNoire, Marco Scuri, Tojan Thomas Browne, Taylor Yates.