It’s a very British summer pastime – mooching around a car park, peering into other people’s boots, wherein they have laid out an array of tat sourced from granny’s attic, the garden shed or the absent student’s childhood bedroom. We just can’t get enough of the car boot fair.

Art Car Boot Fair is just one of these, but with a twist. For the past three years, a growing group of artists have abandoned their galleries for one summer’s day to sell work directly to a family audience. How about an original print by Peter Blake for £25? Or a T-shirt by the fashion designer Anne McCloy bearing the legend F*** OFF (without the asterisks)? Not polite, but very, very popular.

The sisters Karen Ashton and Helen Hayward began with something called the London to Brighton Art Car Rally in 2003 before starting the boot fair. They have watched it expand from 12 cars peddling wares to a handful of curious tourists on Brighton pier to a “mini-festival” with 6,000 visitors last year, tons of stalls and performances that go on all day.

“We weren’t expecting as many people as came in the first year,” says Hayward, “but people would come and look around and go, whereas last year people came and stayed. It was much more of a day out.”

So what – or who – is there to look out for as up-and-coming artists mix with the big names? The actor Rhys Ifans is rumoured to be putting in an appearance, while Vivienne Westwood will be selling I Am Not a Terrorist babygros. Peter Blake is collaborating with his fellow artist Abigail Lane to create a unique set of 54 prints based on a pack of cards. Each print will be sold sealed, by a card-dealing magician named Sav, so you won’t know whether you’re getting a Peter Blake or an Abigail Lane.

Ian Monroe has created a specially commissioned station wagon by covering a Vauxhall estate in vinyl to give it a veneer of marble and wood grain. He’ll be selling Art Car Boot Fair bumper stickers and souping up number plates on site.

The American artist Sarah Baker, whose work investigates status as conveyed by labels and symbols, has also pimped her ride (already a whizzy red convertible) with hundreds of monograms, mixing Native American and hip-hop symbols with the Vauxhall logo. Tracey Emin, fresh from representing Great Britain at the Venice Biennale, will be providing a service of some kind, as yet unspecified. “When we were discussing it, she was saying that what she really loved one year was when she had a little speaker in her bra,” Ashton recalls, “and so to hear it you had to put your ear right up to it.” Where else can you get that close to the heart of the YBAs?

The stall of the long-standing Boot Fair supporter Gavin Turk is shrouded in secrecy. Ashton says: “He won’t tell us, but I think he wants to sell £1,000 artworks – to see how much people will part with at a boot fair.”

At the other end of the spectrum will be the pipe cleaner figures of Harvey Harvey, the ten-year-old son of the painter Marcus. “Last year Harvey sold them for about 50p and made more than £5,” Ashton says, “so this year he’s got a little production line going.” Her sister adds: “They’re actually really nice things. There are these little monkeys that you can hang up. He’s making some slightly bigger ones that he might sell for £1 but he doesn’t want to alienate his market by overpricing them.”

As well as the art, there’s plenty more going on, or in some cases coming off – the burlesque troupe the Whoopee Club will be in residence, shaking their feathers at passers-by. Potentially the naughtiest of all though, is Ben Westwood, son of Vivienne, whose stand is likely to reflect his job – as a fetish photographer. All good, clean family fun.

Art Car Boot Fair, Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London E1 (www.artcarbootfair.com), Jul 8, noon-6pm

ENJOY SOME SERIOUS STREET FUN, SAYS GAVIN TURK

On August 9, 1994, in what were then the empty streets around Charlotte Road in Shoreditch, East London, a small rabble of local artists and creatives performed a strange ritual called The Fête Worse than Death. It was a surreal and shabby country fair in the city, an urban street theatre from which the punters came away clutching ideas and bits of ephemera in exchange for traditional currency. Since then this model has been built on, both within this community and beyond.

The Art Car Boot Fair is probably its most ambitious incarnation and is set to be one of the weird and wonderful attractions of the summer in London. The stuff for sale will be things you’ve never seen before and they’ll probably be pretty fresh to the person who’s trying to sell them too! This is a chance for the artists/ stallholders to do something that they wouldn’t ordinarily do in their normal lives as artists. These sales folk will be short-circuiting the art market as they come into direct contact with the collector. It’s serious fun, as this most curious event flogs its curios. See you there.

Gavin Turk’s Me as Him, Riflemaker, Beak Street, W1 (www.riflemaker.org 020-7439 0000), Jul 3-Sept 1 June 23 - 29, 2007