What are 'Hayvend' machines

A. Hayvend machines are the kind of vending machine more usually associated with pub toilets, though these don't dispense anything cocktail-flavoured or ribbed. First appearing in 1995, and the idea of artist John Hayward, these distinctive black and yellow reconditioned machines dispense small original artworks at 2 a go.

Q. Who is John Hayward

A. Hayward is a 36-year old artist from Chertsey in Surrey. After training to be a telephone engineer, he started working as an artist after a move to Bristol. In 1995 he came up with the idea of Hayvend after salvaging a vending machine from a skip, and he used it to sell his own and other artists' work. Calling his operation Hayvend Laboratories, his latest project, known as Hypermart, is to sell a series of new artists' multiples in the form of digital images, music and short audio-visual works on disk from his machines.

Hayward is dedicated to distributing art without the trappings of elitism that often surround it. He feels that while art should challenge, you shouldn't need a Ph.D to appreciate it. His plans the future include a Hayvend newspaper and a radio project. According to a recent interview in the Big Issue he would love to have one of his machines on a space station or on the Moon.

Q. Where can you find the machines

A. Hayvend now have 17 machines in galleries and art centres throughout the UK, including the Hayward Gallery and the ICA in London, and in the Levi's store in Paris. Since 1995 the work of around 200 artists has been sold through Hayvend machines. The deal is that the individual artist receives half the money and the rest goes to Hayvend Laboratories; the idea has been so successful that Hayvend is now a self-financing operation and artists who might not otherwise have a public forum have their work distributed nationally.

For more details and a full list of artists, projects and the locations of machines go to www.Hayvend.com

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By Simon Smith