ART lovers from all over descended on Marsden Mechanics Hall for the annual Ripple Art Fair.

Over 1,500 attended over the weekend of the fair, which runs until today.

The popular event, now in its sixth year, attracted art lovers from all parts of the country keen to view some of the finest examples of art around and buy pieces that caught their eye.

The event featured exhibits from 26 artists, selling their paintings, prints, photography, collages, textiles, ceramics, sculptures, glass and jewellery.

Organisers also had a few new tricks up their sleeves this year to wow visitors.

These were the Ripple Cinema, which featured films from India, France, USA, Canada and England, along with the Ripple Mail Art Exhibition, which showed postcard portrait artwork from around the world.

Work for both projects has come from a global art network being developed at the fair’s website, www.rippleonline.com

Fair organisers Mark Longbottom and John Burnley created the network last year on social networking site MySpace.

It now links more than 5,200 creative people worldwide.

For this year’s event Ripple also asked its music friends via the MySpace site to provide music to be played throughout the event.

Mr Longbottom said that this year’s event had been as successful as ever with the public.

He said: “We’ve had a lot of interest, from people just wanting to have a look to those who have purchased artwork.

“The fair is a great place for people to come and see a variety of artwork of an excellent quality, as well as hopefully inspiring them.

“The cinema and the mail art exhibition have worked really well. People have been very responsive.’’