All posts tagged: culture

Archigram – ‘every generation must make its own city’

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Sketches and collages from ARCHIGRAM are a recurring reference point for Fat Nancy. The magazine dominated the architectural avant garde in the 1960s and early 1970s with its playful, pop-inspired visions of a technocratic future after its formation in 1961 by a group of young London architects – Warren Chalk, Peter Cook, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron and Michael Webb. “A new generation of architecture must arise with forms and spaces which seems to reject the precepts of ‘Modern’ yet in fact retains those precepts. We have chosen to by pass the decaying Bauhaus image which is an insult to functionalism. You can roll out steel – any length. You can blow up a balloon – any size. You can mould plastic – any shape. Blokes that built the Forth Bridge – they didn’t worry.” So wrote David Greene in a poem published in the first issue of Archigram magazine or, as Greene’s co-editor, Peter Cook, called it “a message, or abstract communication”. It was published in 1961 on a large sheet of the …

REPRESENT III – Hamra Abbas

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Hamra Abbas represented by Lawrie Shabibi Hamra Abbas’s work is playful and unpredictable, it has a definite presence, but is so versatile that it is hard to pin down exactly what it is about an Abbas work that tells you it is hers. Fat Nancy takes a look at why she likes it so much. Firstly and overarching, Abbas’s work is pure. In its use of colour, its concepts and humour, she sticks to absolute and direct messaging. The colours she uses are sharp, clear and translucent, even when used in prints. They remind FN of David Batchelor’s works, often managing to bring a similar brightness to the fore without the need for artificial light, using instead natural light, colour on paper, on glass, with food colouring in plasticine, as a tool to manipulate and reflect the intensity she desires. Abbas’s life, and consequently her work, could be said to be somewhat fractured – coming from Pakistan and a deeply Islamic community and now living and working in the USA. Perhaps it is this contradiction that makes it addictively erratic, fickle and playfully …

REPRESENT I – Hassan Hajjaj

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REPRESENT I – the first part in a FNND series of profiles of artists represented by galleries in Dubai.  Artist and designer Hassan Hajjaj – represented by The Third Line Born in Larache, Morocco, in 1961, Hassan Hajjaj left Morocco for London at an early age. Heavily influence by the club, hip-hop, and reggae scenes of London as well as by his North African heritage, Hajjaj is a self-taught and thoroughly versatile artist whose work includes portraiture, installation, performance, fashion, and interior design, including furniture made from recycled utilitarian objects from North Africa, such as upturned Coca-Cola crates as stools and aluminium cans turned into lamps. Turning to photography in the late 80s, Hajjaj is a master portraitist, taking studio portraits of friends, musicians, and artists, as well as strangers from the streets of Marrakech, often wearing clothes designed by the artist. These colourful and engaging portraits combine the visual vocabulary of contemporary fashion photography and pop art, as well as the studio photography of African artist Malick Sidibe, in an intelligent commentary on the influences …

Click That Dial. FNND’s Internet Radio Selection II

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Thanks to Mark at Rushour Records, we’ve got some more stations to add to the list: NTS, London – At 9am on the morning of Monday the 4th of April ’13 NTS streamed live for the first official time…  Born from the nutstosoup.com blog, NTS aims to fill a void in the community of musically minded progressive thinking people in London.  An idea bigger than just another online community radio station – NTS is a unique platform for inspired people to present their findings, passions and obsessions. East Village Radio – Located in the heart of New York City’s famed East Village, EVR.com carries the neighbourhood’s tradition of producing and nurturing vital music and culture. EVR.com’s original programming streams live from a storefront studio, providing a tangible look into the legendary history of downtown NYC for worldwide listeners. EVR.com streams two-hour live shows covering all genres of music, talk, variety and comedy including in-studio interviews and performances conducted by an eclectic group of presenters, producers, tastemakers and personalities. EVR.com produces and co-produces many special programmes and exclusively …

Cover Story XII – Sofrito Records

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Sofrito is a collective of DJs, producers and artists that combine a love for Tropical rhythms with a firm basis in modern club culture. Rooted in the legendary Tropical Warehouse Parties in East London, Sofrito mixes up vintage sounds from across the tropics with modern productions and exclusive dubplate specials, bridging the gap between eras and continents to produce a unique and intense sound that has seen them play at clubs and festivals across the world. The Sofrito label covers everything from Nigerian acid boogie to raw Gwo Ka rhythms, futuristic sounds from new European producers and heavy Latin vibes from the Pacific coast of Colombia. Paris-based Hugo Mendez has traveled extensively in order to produce groundbreaking compilations for labels such as Strut, Soundway, Jazzman and Nascente and DJs regularly across Europe. Hackney-based Frankie Francis runs The Carvery mastering and dubplate cutting studios, working on vinyl retrieval and mastering for labels such as Strut, Sir Collin’s Music Wheel, NYC Trust, Superfly and many more, as well as cutting dubs for the cream of the reggae and Tropical DJs in the UK. Illustrator and Designer Lewis Heriz works …