FreshlyGround home at last
It’s the classic scenario with so many of our brilliant SA talents – Marcus Wyatt, JustJinger, Tumi, Siya Makuzeni, Soweto Gospel Choir and even T-Boz (yes… Mr P!) and JC (yes the waistcoat wearing white Zulu). So often they spend more time in Europe playing to adoring foreign fans that we wonder if they’ve immigrated. There’s something sad about the fact that our stars are lapped up overseas yet often play to half-full halls here at home with super chipile door prices that can’t make them any money – but… like a lot of things… we’re used to it. Our wonderful musical diplomats Freshly Ground are about to go on their first national tour (well in a long time anyway) here ekhaya and we urge you to buy your ticket and get amongst… PS: Guys – thanks for your Potbelly song, it confirms what us voluptuous people always suspected – that we rock! Details below. It’s been three years since FRESHLYGROUND last released a studio album. Since then this Cape Town based seven-piece has become nothing short of a popular music sensation, selling 250 000 copies of 2004’s ‘Nomvula’, earning an MTV Europe Music Award, racking up huge radio airplay and performing live before a massive number of people. The band has toured extensively over the last two years across Southern Africa and Europe, and they have plans to tackle Australia and the US over the next couple of years. All this and Freshlyground have yet to tour South Africa! Freshlyground, Volkswagen South Africa and Gearhouse are pleased to announce that from early next month – all that will change! The band’s new album ‘Ma’cheri’ was released locally in September. Spurred by their current smash hit ‘Pot Belly’, the amazing album has already racked up Platinum plus sales status. To promote the record and re-connect with the largest possible number of their loyal South African fans, the band is to embark on a spectacular four city National Tour, running from the 2nd to the 11th of November. The band and their management decided to put the tour together themselves without the assistance of a promoter: “Firstly, live performance is key for Freshlyground, and we wish to retain total creative control over the tour. Even more importantly, we’ve chosen to do it ourselves as a move towards empowering the band – and hopefully South African musicians as a whole – who often take a back seat when it comes to supporting international tours. This country hosts major international acts every year, yet few promoters are willing to risk touring local musicians on this scale.” says Freshlyground manager Sevi Spanoudi. As the title sponsor of this tour, Volkswagen...
Why not Simpsonise
We been wondering how come so many Facebook photo’s look like the Simpson’s – then we found out about Simpsonise Me – a website that let’s you upload a photo of yourself and turn yourself yellow (Simpsonise yo’self) to look like a Simpson. It’s put together by Burger King, the sponsor behind the upcoming Simpsons movie, as a viral way of spreading the association and celebrating the launch of the full-length movie. It’s fun – click here to...
Represent BigUps: Sony Bravia TV Ad
It’s not just because we love Sony Bravia products but also because this ad is just so wonderful it’s really worth sharing. Gotta love bunnies! Just think how much time, blood, sweat and tears went into creating this work of art and crafting all those colourful play doh bunnies… Big Ups to Sony yet again. See an interview with animation director Darren Walsh, from Passion Pictures, on Creative Review… great resource all ye creatives if ya don’t know it yet....
Represent is Loving: Bill Sullivan’s pics
Just wanted to share this awesome photographer with you all, Bill Sullivan is based in New York and takes photo’s of ordinary people doing fairly ordinary NY things like coming through the metro/underground ticket turnstiles, exiting from a lift etc…. He seems to catch them at the exact same moment, his work somehow catching humans at their most real and untouched… just getting through the day. What’s amazing is how similar vacant tired expressions can look. Enjoy. Daily Ink /Utata fills us in: “He calls it “situational photography” and describes it as “as a combination of street photography and portrait photography.” In essence, it involves the photographer visibly loitering in a specific, clearly identifiable location, taking candid surreptitious photographs of ordinary people engaged in an ordinary situation. New York photographer Bill Sullivan has compared his photographic approach to wildlife photography. He establishes a likely location, waits until the subject arrives, takes the photograph. Instead of deer or rare bird species or crocodiles, Sullivan photographs people in their natural...
CATCH THIS QUICK! Kathryn Smith
We have been wanting to catch this exhibition since it started but have been too busy – you only have two days to catch brilliant young artist and ex-Durbanite Kathryn Smith’s work “In Camera” at the Goodman on Jan Smuts – so Go Go Go. We’ll do our best! The Goodman Gallery presents Kathryn Smith’s In Camera, opening on September 15 at 18h00. This is her first solo exhibition since her Standard Bank Young Artist touring exhibition Euphemism (2004-2005). The exhibition closes 6 October, 2007. In Camera is a Latin phrase literally meaning ‘in private’ or ‘in secret’. It is most commonly used in legal cases where testimony is presented in private chambers instead of in open court. In camera testimony is most often facilitated where reliving the experience of a violent and traumatic event through verbal narration would be aggravated by having to do this in public. This opportunity is often given to victims of sexual assaults and children involved in criminal cases. Kathryn Smith’s In Camera presents a controlled, immersive environment featuring a series of portrait drawings, sourced from a range of print and online media photographs and processed so as to blur the distinction between the handmade and the mass-produced. Her subjects are the victims and perpetrators of violent acts, the circumstances of which remain almost incomprehensible in their extremity, even if the facts surrounding tabloid revelations of these cruel private desires are known. Smith is particularly interested in how, through repetition, certain photographic images get detached from their subjects and the representation of a person becomes emblematic of ‘victimhood’, ‘the missing’, ‘monstrosity’ or ‘evil’. This kind of rhetoric functions as a means to situate the perpetrators outside the realm of human behaviour and does not allow us to dwell on the particular circumstances of each violent interaction. Smith’s drawings have been made with ultraviolet-sensitive inks, invisible to the naked eye. As an artist known to work with performance and photo-based media, the choice of ink, brush and paper presents another way of processing the photographic image, particularly these images mediated and re-mediated such that they become like a retinal afterimage, a trace of something we have seen or experienced but which remains beyond our grasp. In setting up a relationship between the spectrum and the spectral, In Camera is an exhibition of ghosts, an attempt to reclaim that which eludes cognitive and emotional capture and retention. The installation comprises audio and lighting components, making use of both the Goodman Gallery’s public façade and display windows to accommodate aspects of the exhibition for evening...
Proudly brought to you by:
