Sanguinearts Network Journal

This Sunday  (27 Jan) is Hunga Munga's Art Bazaar at the Melange Social Club, 281  Kingsland Road. Its free entry and many local artists and makers will be selling their wares, from fashion and jewellery to toys, books and art. www.hungamunga.co.uk

I popped into the Union Gallery  - one of my favourites - and caught the Richard Learoyd photos. Like giant colour pinhole images, his aesthetic was mainly wan young girls and flowers but undeniably beautiful with an incredible depth of field: like you feel the texture of blossoms or a moistened lip. www.union-gallery.com

Steven Claydon's intriguing exhibition 'Strange Elements Permit Themselves the Luxury of Happening' is on now at the Camden Arts Centre (www.camdenartscentre.org). The title is taken from a Charlie Chan mystery, which no doubt creates a level of story and interplay, but think more of a provincial museum stuffed with minor relics, along with works by Paolozzi, Wyndham-Lewis, Sutherland etc. With themes of museology, the mystical and musty prevail.

New albums due this year from: Hot Chip, Gnarls Barkley (despite their label threatening to get bought out by the soulless moguls at EMI), Morrissey (Greatest Hits with new single then studio album in the late summer/autumn), Kaiser Chiefs, The B52s (!), Metallica (what can we expect from these dinosaurs when even the nu-metal crowd are sounding decidely long in the tooth?), Primal Scream...

Coming soon to our screens, Anna Friel in a US 'Twin Peaks-esque' black comedy called Pushing Daisies. She plays the partner to a pie-maker who can bring people back from the dead.

If you're bored of the drivel regurgitated in the London free papers look our for Litro - an independent literary publication which is available in good bookshops, newsagents and on the street. www.litro.co.uk  

And finally... we love all things art and we're pretty fond of getting on our bikes and riding. So imagine how pleased I was to learn of Frank Patterson, a cycling illustrator from the first half of the 20th Century. He was probably the princical illustrator of his day for anything involving a bike. He was born in Portsmouth (yay!) in 1871 to an Naval family and attendedPortsmouth Art College from age 14 . When at 19 he realised his creative fortunes lay in the capital he walked all the way! With little money life was hard and he lodged in poorer districts of Brixton and Islington. (NB: Van Gogh briefly lived in Brixton). After a brief and unhappy stint in the army  he returned and developed through design studios into his own practise, regularly working for the popular Cycling magazine. Very inspiring. For more info and prints visit www.thefrankpattersonsociety.co.uk

Check out the music of this guy who used to live upstairs: www.myspace.com/tarabrowne

Secret Masterpieces of Cinema at Tate Modern from over this weekend Friday to Monday, featuring short works by Luis Bunuel, Maya Deren, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Len Lye, Charles and Ray Eames, Kenneth Anger, Eduardo Paolozzi, Fernard Leger,  Martha Rosler, Germaine Dulac, Hans Richter, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Nam June Paik, Pippilotti Rist and more! The series is then on at the ICA then tours the country - do not miss it! Tickets just £5
http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/eventseducation/film/icoessentialsthesecretmasterpiecesofcinema.htm
www.icoessentials.org.uk
www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/essentials.htm

No More Heroes
Music and Identity are intrinsicly linked - so goes the strapline of this talk about pop culture and image at the London College of Communication in Elephant and Castle on Thursday night 6.30-8.30 £5, includes beer.

I got an mp3 album of one of my favourite music/art groups: Dreams of Tall Buildings at Ditto Music. I've also been in contact with them via MySpace to get a few other items, and perhaps work on some projects for the future, so who knows.

Check out this exhibtion currently on in New York Public Library:
http://disembedded.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/line-up-bush-administration-mug-shots/
It's by artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, and the full online exhibition 'Multiple Interpretations' can be seen here:
http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/print/exhibits/multiple/index.html
There are lots of articles about it on the web with Yanks slagging each other off - very funny, good timing what with that dreary election going on... so well done I say to these artists for raising the tempo a bit, even if the work is a bit glib.

Closer to home, Check out the website of an artist friend of ours, Robert Birch: www.robbirch.com
and also Pascale Marthine Tayou who is currently on display at Milton Keynes until this coming weekend: amazing website:
http://www.pascalemarthinetayou.com/pmtEN.php

Some new exhibitions: 
Space to Draw at the Jerwood Space 17 Jan - 10 Feb, PV on the 16th, drawings by sculptors such as the people's favourite Antony Gormley.
Jennifer Evans new sculpture at Ritter/Zamet 10 Jan - 2 Feb, PV on the 10th; Evans is a recent RCA Masters graduate using some traditional materials along with found objects in her installations.A couple of good tracks I heard on the radio:
Santogold - Creator: sounded a bit like M.I.A but a bit different...
Does it offend you, yeah? - Rockstars: great name, indescribable but amazing
so download those when you can.
Also think the Wombats are okay, and liked new material form Maximo Park (not a million miles away from Wombats really), and quite liked a track from Gallows, although I can't remember what it was called. They were secribed as punk, but I'd say they sounded more hardcore/death metal. Anyway, nice to hear that on mainstream radio - otherwise (with the exception of people like Lily Allen and Mike Skinner, and the dubstep/grime crews, and the alternative noise weird folk crowd [but they're rarely on the radio]) current popular music is like being back about 10 years ago: there's techno/house tracks, garagey tunes, jangley indie bands who sound like they're working on the next High School Musical teen movie - it's so sickening, where's the innovation? Hopefully underground and not in the hands of the pop music machine.