Barbara and the Camp Dogs transformed Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre into a pub gig. But what started as a comedy became a searing tragedy about Australia’s inability to listen to Indigenous people.
Ngathu, in Bangarra’s Ones Country, is a brilliant combination of the contemporary and traditional, telling the story of the ngathu, or cycad, in Arnhem Land.
Photo by Daniel Boud
Bangarra’s current season of three new works, Ones Country, is uneven in parts but worth seeing for the diversity of Indigenous stories from some new choreographic voices.
Donald Horne saw Australia as a country that had got lucky, but was squandering its luck.
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Donald Horne saw Australia as a lucky country that was squandering its luck. His bold ideas captured the nation’s imagination. But being a public intellectual is no longer easy. Who will come up with the next grand ideas?
Cameron Goodall in The Sound of Falling Stars at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
Damian Bennett
The Sound of Falling stars brings 31 male singers who died young, including Sid Vicious, Jim Morrison and Jeff Buckley, back to life, and forces us to question our role in their fates.
A stunning display of musical virtuosity (L-R) Naomi Crellin, Luke Thompson, Kaichiro Kitamura, Trish Delaney-Brown and Nick Begbie.
Claudio Raschella
The Guardians of the Galaxy team are rocking the universe again in the latest volume of the science fiction blockbuster. But how does the science stand up to some number crunching?
Basing purchasing decisions solely on online product reviews may be unwise.
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Online ratings and reviews may seem like a good way to see what other consumers think of a product but they can be to simplistic and misleading, research shows.
This photo of Pearl Mackenzie, taken by Charles Mountford in 1937, is part of the UNESCO-listed Mountford-Sheard Collection.
Image courtesy of the State Library of South Australia and the Adnyamathanha Traditional Lands Associatio
This year has got off to an awful start. Thank God for the Adelaide Festival, a blaze of hope, skill and fun. Here are our critics’ highlights of a beautifully crafted program.
Installation view Versus Rodin: bodies across space and time.
Art Gallery of South Australia, 2017
The Art Gallery of South Australia has created something special with Versus Rodin. Works by 65 contemporary artists, surrounded by the gallery’s Rodin collection, take on a wonderful glow.
Fragrance is intimately linked with our memories and feelings.
J. Sibiga Photography/Flickr
Surely only a weirdo wouldn’t enjoy the smell of flowers and pine forests? But as Kate Grenville writes in her latest book, fragrance causes untold misery to many of us.
Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) and Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) in Fifty Shades Darker.
Universal Pictures
After Fifty Shades of Grey there was debate about its romanticisation of an abusive relationship. The sequel confirms that this wasn’t a misconception.
Thomas Barlow is more used to writing factual reports on science innovation, so his first novel gives an entertaining insight into the science community.
Dan Sultan played a defiant version of Midnight Oil’s The Dead Heart at 1967: Music in the Key of Yes.
Prudence Upton
From My Island Home to Treaty, Indigenous musical luminaries gathered in Sydney on Tuesday to sing classic songs marking the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 referendum.
A wall of Myuran Sukumaran’s self portraits at the Sydney Festival exhibition Myuran Sukumaran: Another Day in Paradise.
Supplied
Most people who see Myuran Sukumaran: Another Day in Paradise, opening today as part of the Sydney Festival, will already have a strong opinion on the artist and his death – but a few may have their minds changed.
Debbie Reynolds poses with her daughter Carrie Fisher backstage after accepting her Lifetime Achievement award at the 2015 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
REUTERS/Mike Blake
After the deaths of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher in the last days of 2016, the release of a new documentary about their lives, Bright Lights, feels serendipitous. Already shown to some film festivals…
Dev Patel as Saroo Brierley in Lion (2016).
Long Way Home Productions
Lion, which has screened to critical acclaim around the world, seems to think it’s a political film. In reality it’s an effective melodrama that uncritically embraces a colonial fantasy of white saviours.
Enough with the charming, naughty funny-guy rants. There are too many in a new anthology of Australian comedy writing – and women display a superior comic imagination.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne