Bangarra’s Dark Emu is a response to Bruce Pascoe’s book of the same name. But it doesn’t embrace the full potential of its source’s game-changing impact.
Gavin Webber and Kate Harman in The Mathematics of Longing.
Art Work Agency
Sixty two countries are represented at this year’s International Architecture Exhibition. In the Australian Pavilion, 65 species of grassland plants fill a black cube.
The lively reconfiguring of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman exhibitions means it is harder to work out which paintings the judges are considering as potential winners.
Planet Earth II Live fuses footage from the BBC series with live orchestration. Despite some narrative flaws, it’s a stirring call to look after our environment.
Participants in A Tasmanian Requiem, a musical performance addressing Tasmania’s Black War.
Alastair Bett
A Tasmanian Requiem brings together Western and Aboriginal voices to confront the violence of the state’s Black War. It shows what a historical reckoning, and reconciliation, might look and sound like.
Tim Winton sets his latest novel, The Shepherd’s Hut, in the salt lakes of Western Australia.
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The Impressionists were obsessed with the science of colour, which is celebrated in a new exhibition in Adelaide. At least 50 of the paintings have never previously been exhibited in Australia.
The Vikings have become synonymous with voyages and violence, but a new exhibition at the Melbourne Museum demonstrates their domestic and spiritual side.
The 21st Sydney Biennale is the first to be directed by a curator of non-Western heritage. While the number of artists is modest, lost quantity is made up by quality.
Detail from William Barak, Figures in possum skin cloaks, 1898, pencil, wash, charcoal solution, gouache and earth pigments on paper, 57.0 x 88.8 cm (image and sheet)
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Purchased, 1962
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne