Our Favourite Magazine goes Online
Oct11

Our Favourite Magazine goes Online

You know we’re kind of fussy about what we lurve… So when we tell you we LURVE something or we ‘recommend’ it, it means we give it the Represent stamp of approval, which we hope bears some kind of weight.  Our favourite local magazine, ONE SMALL SEED, which we hope you all invest your R40 bucks in whenever you see another fabulous edition, has just gone digital with their brand new website where you can lap up their intelligent, visionary content and download the avant-latest edition mahala.  Now OSS are guys who have superb taste and a firm grip of SA’s pop culture. Know that if it’s in ONE SMALL SEED it’s top of it’s game.  That’s why we’d like to thank Guiseppe and his team for the glowing and highly complimentary review of our blogazine Represent in this month’s edition… We are honoured to be included!  😉 Start collecting OSS now – it’s never too late to start learning and get informed. (PS: Guiseppe I am still waiting for the...

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FreshlyGround home at last
Oct11

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...

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Represent BigUps: Sony Bravia TV Ad
Oct09

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....

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Represent is Loving: Bill Sullivan’s pics
Oct09

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...

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CATCH THIS QUICK! Kathryn Smith
Oct04

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...

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Bright Young Thing: Musa Hlatshwayo
Oct04

Bright Young Thing: Musa Hlatshwayo

You know we love to share all things bright and beautiful with you across all artistic genres including dance – celebrate one of KZN’s true movers and shakers Musa Hlatshwayo, who’s choreography has been chosen to tour 10 countries across the African Continent.  Some of you will remember the recent call for entries for Dance! Africa Dance! – Musa represented SA in Paris in 2006 and his star continues to rise – see below. ‘Umthombi’ – South African Dance on continental tour Musa Hlatshwayo, South African dancer and choreographer is going on tour in 10 countries on the continent to present the dance piece Umthombi. The dance theatre duet is the narrative of a male adolescent who is in search of his traditional identity and manhood. In his quest, the young boy undergoes the rites of passage as set out by the traditions of his people. He learns accountability and responsibility, means that he applies as survival tools in the grazing fields. Aesthetically, the work explores creative movement, contemporary dance, sound and music in an attempt to explore the future of a uniquely African aesthetic in story telling. Umthombi premiered at the Jomba! Contemporary Dance Festival in 2004, the year when Hlatshwayo was awarded the KZN Young Choreographer’s Commission by the Centre for Creative Arts (UKZN) and the Jomba! Festival to create a dance piece for the festival. Umthombi also featured in the Dance Umbrella Festival in 2007. Umthombi is not the first piece where Hlatshwayo incorporates tradition, at the FNB Dance Umbrella Festival in 2006; he presented a dance piece on Ukuqiniswa, the traditional practise of strengthening or safeguarding oneself from man-made evil forces such as witchcraft. Hlatshwayo is an internationally recognised dance professional who represented South Africa in the Danse! L’Afrique Danse! competition in Paris in 2006. (Applications for the 2008 edition of the competition which will be held in Tunisia can be downloaded from the French Institute website www.ifas.org.za/culture Deadline: 15 Nov) The tour was organized by the French cultural network. Umthombi will be hosted in the following countries Kenya, Mauritius, Madagascar, Namibia, Zambia, Tanzania, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Malawi and Mozambique from Sept to Nov this year. See schedule below: DATE City/Country Sept 2007 Nairobi, Kenya Sept 2007 Mauritius Oct 2007 Windhoek, Namibia Oct 2007 Lusaka, Zambia Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Djibouti Addis, Ethiopia Blantyre, Malawi Maputo, Mozambique Nov 2007 Antanarivo, Madagascar. Here’s Musa’s backstory from the Centre for Creative Arts in KZN – pic by Val Adamson: Born and raised in Maphumulo, KwaZulu-Natal, Musa Hlatshwayo holds a BA (Hons) in Performance Studies (UKZN), a Dance & Choreography Diploma from the Copenhagen School o fModern Dance (Denmark), a Postgraduate Certificate in...

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