Art? Wat Art? Watford art, that’s what. Wat Art is a new pop-up gallery in Charter Place that celebrates local artistic talent.

National art organisation East Street Arts, which specialises in alternative settings for viewing art across the country, is working with Herts Visual Arts and intu Watford to celebrate our town’s artists’ talents by transforming a vacant shop in Charter Place shopping area into a pop-up art gallery. This will be the last use of this shop prior to its planned demolition.

The first exhibition to be held in the shop/gallery will display traditional and contemporary art and crafts from 23 artists from Watford and around.

There will be silk batiks (hand-dyed fabrics), ceramics and encaustic wax (heated beeswax) painting.

Re-use, reinvention and remembering traditional skills will be a constant theme of the exhibition.

Two Watford artists who will be displaying their work are Glynnis Abraham and Freya Brookman.

Glynnis will be showing a number of paintings from her World War One series, while Freya will be exhibiting her cushions and homewares.

There will also be a programme of talks, workshops and demonstrations throughout. The limited time the gallery will be in existence will make this unmissable for local art enthusiasts.

Jan Langton, Watford area co-ordinator for Herts Visual Arts’ Open Studios, says: "As a member of HVA, I feel it is a great opportunity for local artists to be invited to showcase our work in a pop-up gallery in Watford. It will demonstrate the amount of varied artistic talent in the area.”

  • Wat Art will be at the pop-up gallery in 39 Charter Place, first floor, Watford from Saturday, February 22 to Friday, March 14, Wednesday to Saturday 11am to 5.30pm. Demonstrations, workshops and talks will take place on Thursdays from 6pm to 8.30pm, on Saturdays from 11am to 5pm, and on Sundays from 2pm to 4pm. Details: Facebook/ EastStArtsSouth