Postman who has art world sorted

In the 1960s, curating just wasn't an option for anyone, postman or otherwise, without an art history degree. But today, with the art world's increasingly open-door policy, everyone can, in theory, do it. All it takes is a gift for organisation, a finger on the pulse and a brass neck, or what Waites prefers to call "innate entrepreneurial spirit". An eye also helps.

Sitting at the kitchen table of his parents' house in Mill Hill, the strain of his latest and most ambitious curatorial venture to date - a year-long season of exhibitions in two London caf?s opening this week - is starting to show. I find him suffering from severe sleep deprivation, hardly surprising in one whose working day begins with sorting the first delivery at 5.30am and ends 10 miles of legwork later at 12.30pm. And that's just the posting bit.

"Yes," he assures me, "I'm a proper postman. I've been 10 years with the Royal Mail - that's Consignia now." Doesn't that make him a consignatory, I ask? "Consigniere," he corrects me. Waites has a way with words.

This is just as well, as his only academic distinction is having attended the same school as Peter Mandelson. After leaving at 16 with no O-levels and drifting into painting and decorating, he got the Royal Mail job to pay the mortgage. So where does the art come in?

It all started with a fascination with Oscar Wilde that led on to Aubrey Beardsley and Art Nouveau, then to the Paris of the Impressionists and finally, via Rachel Whiteread's House - the concrete cast of a condemned East End terrace home - to contemporary art.

He dates the change from art lover to entrepreneur to a Damascene conversion in November 1998 outside the Royal College of Art in Kensington Gore. He was queuing all night to be first in line for a Frank Auerbach in the RCA Secret show - where you can pick up unsigned "postcards" by famous artists for £35 - when he looked at the queue behind him and thought: "All these people are art junkies." He decided to form a company, Artjunky, to feed their habit.

The past three years have been a steep learning curve, with some disappointments, including rejection by the London Arts Board of two funding applications, but now, Waites says, "the business has a life of its own". With no financial backing and an office in his parents' spare bedroom, he launched his first show of 13 artists, Superstition, on Friday 13 October last year at the Rivington Gallery in Hoxton.

It included work by such established names as Matthew Radford and Angus Fairhurst (not to mention that Auerbach postcard), but more impressive still, it was promoted by an hour-long film screened on Home nightclub's multimedia interface in Leicester Square. Made by his niece's art-student boyfriend, the film was such a success that it was still being screened two months after the exhibition had closed.

This year Waites is trying something rather different: a two-pronged assault on the West and East End art worlds with a programme of exhibitions, titled Period, running concurrently in two contrasting venues: the French patisserie La Madeleine in upmarket Vigo Street, W1, a stone's throw from Cork Street, and the EC Cafe in up-andcoming Rivington Street, the last surviving greasy spoon on the block.

Different artists will exhibit in each caf? every month, but both opening exhibitions feature Ben Saffer, a 22-yearold prodigy with a story as remarkable as Waites's. Three years ago, Saffer was living in Centre Point hostel when his drawings were spotted in the homeless art magazine Smart by ad agency BBH, scouting for "street artists" to customise a line of jeans for its client Levi.

NOW under contract to Sakura International to produce designs for its accessories, Saffer has shown in Tokyo, but this is his London debut. He's been approached by a gallery, but preferred the cafe idea: "I just want to plaster the place with pictures and drawings. I'm not after money, but if people want to buy drawings, they can."

Waites is more commercial, though for now he's resigned to being "boracic" (lint, ie, skint) - he's just happy to see people enjoying his shows. With Period up and running, he's already on to his next Artjunky project. This involves sending "solid art crews" into empty shops in Carnaby - developer Shaftesbury plc's name for the area around Carnaby Street - for a series of "quick in-and-out, smash-and-grab" exhibitions as the developer makes the sites available.

The first, due to open on 5 November at 21 Beak Street (for a couple of weeks at least), will be called "Painting's not dead, it's merely drying out". There's no sign of Waites's flow of ideas following suit - the next Carnaby show will be a photographic one followed by a performance and dance piece on Oscar Wilde. With or without support from the London Arts Board, Londoners can expect to see more of the curating postman.

? The first artist of Period is Ben Saffer at La Madeleine, 5 Vigo St, W1, and the EC Cafe, 14 Rivington Street, EC2 (until early November). For information on future Artjunky exhibitions visit www.artjunky.co.uk or call 020 8906 1740.