Crime and Crochet...

There's an intriguing story developing that involves crocheting, an innocent abroad, the UK legal system and how in this day of spam and phishing a plea for help can raise the most cynical of eyebrows. 



Agata Oleksiak, aka Olek, a Polish born American artist, according to her blog arrived in London for a couple of professional engagements and to donate some of her work to a charitable organization. After the charitable event an altercation with a drunk man ended up with Olek falling foul of the Kafkaesque English legal system. Held in remand for five days and then subject to an 8am - 6pm curfew and the added delight of being forced to wear an ASBO bracelet, Olek finds herself in a rather stressful situation where she's not allowed to leave the UK. There's no trial date, her legal aid lawyer is alleged to have messed up, the as yet unspecified case, she has limited funds and a need to raise money, clear her name and get back home to New York...


A plea to US friends for help in funding produced much incredulity and assumptions that her on-line life had been hacked and any plea for assistance, must be part of an elaborate scam.


Yet, there are links to her lawyer, and Tony's Gallery  which is exhibiting her show in London in January 2012. That takes a lot of brass neck 


A Facebook friend in the US Savannah Spirit  received an email and the link to Olek's blog and put it up on her facebook page. Over the course of the evening, sensible realistic people sensing a scam, urged caution. Then Olek herself joined the conversation, this was still not enough for some, who asked that she call a friend. She duly did this and Cat Weaver who runs Art Machine blog posted the following piece. This is still not enough for some people to believe that a plea for help in funding a lawyer is genuine.


So the arts community is faced with this dilemma, do we believe that someone who does yarn bombing for a living has fallen foul of the system and in exasperation has made a plea for help or do we simply adopt the cold hearted cynical view that any plea for money is bound to be a scam? Naturally, those of an even more cynical bent might view this as a scam not on the generous hearted, but the actual art world, no stranger to hoaxes and scams itself...


I make no judgements here, but I have called the Lawyer's office and am waiting on confirmation that Olek is actually a client and that he has approved her blog appeal.

Posted by MMac