A quick ( and incomplete ) round up of January events...

Working life is taking some adjustment after the long months of unemployment. Loving the new job, but missing having all that time and energy to spend on mooching and art perusing.

Lots of arty and media related stuff to put in your diary going on in Manchester this month. This short list is a combination of some great looking new stuff and a few goodies continuing on from last year. 

Tuesday the 13th is the beginning of the University of Salfords's MA Contemporary Fine Art Show. This show case take place in three different venues over nearly a month.

The show is centred on the Chapman Gallery with further work showing at the Allerton Annexe on the Salford Campus, with an outpost at one of my favourite venues, the Nexus Art Café.

Wednesday the 14th is the Social Media Cafe at the recently refurbished Northern.

On Thursday the 22nd a new exhibition opens at the Chinese Arts Centre. Seeing is Believing features the work of video and photographic artist Eric Fong.

Laura White's If I Had a Monkey I Wouldn't Need a TV - which I wrote about for City Life - continues at the Castlefield Gallery until the 25th of January. 

Speaking of continued exhibitions and City Life - the lovely exhibition of paintings by Nicoletta Ceccoli continues at Richard Goodall Gallery until the 31st of January. My temporarily misplaced preview piece is up on the City Life website.

The awful Intertwining Line is finally over, and the much more exciting looking Interspecies takes over the galleries at the Cornerhouse on the 23rd. 

Jim Medway - who I only discovered this weekend has a massive canvas in Manchester Art Gallery - is transforming Common Bar in the Northern Quarter. Starting on the 29th of January, it sounds pretty ace and his last exhibition/revamp of common looked great too. Check out pictures of when he turned Common into a record shop on his blog here or join the facebook event here.

'Are You Dead?' @ Nexus Arts Cafe

There's a new show coming up at the Nexus Arts Cafe. Sounds rather interesting, especially since my favourite museum is Biologiska Museet in Stockholm.

The blurb states:

''Are You Dead?' is the latest exhibition in Nexus Art Café. Three contemporary taxidermists explore the relationship that we have with the animal kingdom. Disturbing, shocking and often highly amusing this exhibition challenges our perceptions of the animal kingdom by placing them in an unexpected context.'

Its opening is this Thursday 7 - 10pm and then runs until the 1st of November 2008.

There is also apparently a collection of stuffed animals in The Manchester Museum , which I should go and check out. Shamefully, despite previously studying at U of M, I haven't checked out the Museum yet.

Nexus Art Cafe: Eating & Eaten

One of my favourite not-so-secret secret places in Manchester's Northern Quarter is the Nexus Art Cafe on Dale Street.

It's a great place to pause, unlike most commercial coffee spots, whatever you've been doing. For example, in my desperate search for a copy of Halo Jones, it is perfectly located between Travelling Man and Forbidden Planet. Perhaps I just love it here because of the associations with those I love most in Manchester. It is unfortunate that it is no longer a night cafe, since in that capacity it was an unique and wonderful stop pit on an evening life, and I'm certain saved a few lives. However, it's opening hours now: 10 am - 7pm Monday to Friday and 11 am - 7 pm Saturday are a little more usual and probably guarantees a better income.

The current exhibition is Eating & Eaten, a show of works exploring food. Although the art works are of variable quality, they fill the cafe and they comprehensively utilise different types of display areas around the site. The relaxed cafe atmosphere and the eclecticism of the work and methods of display means that when substance is lacking it is not so apparent. If I saw most of these items in a more austere white-cube setting I would find them pretty unimpressive, but here they work far more successfully in their environment. I particularly like Marie Stephen's The Three Graces with Pasta, 2008, but then perhaps I just rather like squidgy bums and spaghetti a little too much.

John Yeadon's Vanitas are graphically attractive, playing with text, the significance of words in relation to food and consumption and images of food. Unfortunately there seems to be a lack of depth to the works, and the use textural and visual qualities in the images feels rather familiar. Although this familiarity is not overly problematic, they sit comfortably in the space and are quite beautiful to look at, I am left wanting more.

Eating & Eaten runs until the 27th of September. Nexus Cafe is always worth a visit and is probably my favourite place to hangout and snaffle wifi in the city centre, safe in the knowledge that there will always be something half interesting to look at.