For the launch of the Gallery on 4^th, we were looking for artists who are inspired by South African street culture and who are able to convey what it means to be young and BE TRUE in SA today. Of course we were expecting these artists to be fairly young but some of them, like the creative collective “The Punk Soul Brothers”, still managed to surprise us…

At 10 and 11 respectively, Ross and Callum Sey actually fit the collaborator’s profile quite perfectly, listing skateboarding, art, reading and Playstation games as favourite free time activities. With some practical assistance from Mom Sue they’ve produced a range of radical T-Shirts that just goes to show ‘being true’ has nothing to do with age.

Here is an excerpt from a recent interview with The Punk Soul Brothers:

What do you want to be doing in ten years time?

C: I want to go to Paris to study to be an author at this famous university (I can’t remember the name of it).

R: I’m going to America to study to be a graphic artist.

Best part of your day?

C: Getting home from school.

R: (nodding) Getting home from school.

Worst part of your day?

C: Homework.

R: (nodding) Homework.

If you could change the world in one way, what would you do?

R: I’d stop crime.

C: I’d stop pollution.

Your definition of art?

C: Expressing yourself.

R: (nodding) Expressing yourself.

C: Hey! Stop copying me.

For more info, contact Sue at: susansey@mweb.co.za

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Of course you know how to pronounce Nike. But a quick Internet search on the pronunciation of the name delivered an astonishing 300 000+ results.
(For some reason, the Australians and Germans seem to be more ambivalent than most.)

To clarify, Nike does not rhyme with bike, like or Mike. It actually rhymes with very few English words, psyche and spikey being the only two I could come up with.
(More formally, its pronunciation can be given as Ny-key or /naɪki/.)

The company started off as Blue Ribbon Sports in 1964 and was only officially renamed Nike in 1978, after the winged goddess of victory of Greek mythology. Nike supposedly sat at the side of Zeus, the ruler of the Olympian pantheon of Mount Olympus.

As the symbol of victorious encounters, she was said to preside over history’s earliest battlefields - a tradition echoed by our gear on the modern battlefields of sport.

In retrospect, Blue Ribbon Sport would most probably have lead to less confusion in the pronunciation department. But somehow it just doesn’t do it, does it?

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Nike 1/1 is a creative program dedicated to telling sports stories through the lens of art with 100% pure originality. The brief for “2008 - The Art of Football” was to create a completely new take on the beautiful game, with keywords such as tension, beauty, passion, drama, life and death.

 

 

As a kick-off, 11 associates were chosen from some of the world’s most respected talents. (Among the chosen ones was South Africa’s own Khaya, cartoonist extraordinaire!) These associates then chose a further 11 finalists from thousands of submissions from upcoming and established artists.

At the exhibition of these works of art, the curator announced one winner that will collaborate to “Design a Dunk – Create a following.” The lucky guy this year is Patrik Söderstam who, it was felt, best interpreted the original brief and would be ‘the most interesting artist’ to collaborate with on a Nike 1/1 Dunk.

We can’t wait, Patrik!

Click here for more on the 1/1 Collective.

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When a planned trip to Zimbabwe left Pieter Hugo stuck in Musina, the northernmost town in South Africa, he made the best of it.

His telling photographs of the town, its people and its interiors, leave the viewer with a lingering melancholy and perhaps some new perspective on a changing country and its changing people. His show at the Standard Bank Gallery in Johannesburg is on until 5 July 2008 and definitely worn a visit.

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All hail, Bafana Bafana!

Our national soccer team deserves a pat on the back and three loud cheers for getting their 2010 African Nations Cup qualifying campaign back on track by beating Equatorial Guinea 4-1 on Saturday.

Is this a sign of good things to come under new coach Joel Santana? We’ll be closer to an answer next Saturday when South Africa play Sierra Leone in Freetown.

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