Arts
Stage
Melbourne Festival taps the mainstream
KYLIE NORTHOVER Strong ticket sales and a more accessible program highlights festival opening.
Top stories
Music
Gurrumul opens up his world
Dewi Cooke In Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu's life there are simple facts - of biology, of work, of daily existence - and then there is a reality that is more unfathomable.
Art
Epiphany on Somali life
Sonia Harford By 2050, Australians might know as much about Africans as they do about Italian or Vietnamese immigrants.
Dance
Going deep into the imagination
STEPHANIE BUNBURY Choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan aims for sincerity in his Rite of Spring.
Wagner ran rings around tradition
BARNEY ZWARTZ The late 19th-century battle of the two composers pitted custom against innovation.
Lear takes on new territory
ANDREW STEPHENS The Shadow King is spoken in not only English, but also a rich Northern Territory creole.
Music
Kings of the road
CRAIG MATHIESON Hunters & Collectors are back on tour, joined by Something for Kate. Mark Seymour and Paul Dempsey discuss this new chapter for the Hunnas, as Craig Mathieson listens in.
A family that plays together
Andrew Drever Audego's collaboration rather surprisingly does not strain the duo's marriage.
Album
Brave foray paying off for Eskimo Joe
Peter Vincent Eskimo Joe is best known as the rock three-piece that gave us the chart-topping Black Fingernails, Red Wine in 2006. But the Perth three-piece's brave foray into crowd-funded electronic music couldn't have gone much better so far.
No.1
Lorde hits No.1 on US Billboard chart
Kiwi singing sensation Lorde has made history, claiming the No.1 spot on the US Billboard chart.
Giant of Australian music dies
Dewi Cooke Melbourne's classical music community is mourning conductor and educator John Hopkins who died on Monday, aged 86.
Stage
Power, pomp and a change of circumstance
STEVE DOW The Wharf Revue returns to skewer the high and mighty.
Theatre
Masterwork to challenge audiences
KYLIE NORTHOVER On the eve of the premiere of his new production, director Daniel Schlusser is excited and anxious.
Theatre
History lesson for a new generation
ANDREW STEPHENS When several hundred people arrive on the outskirts of Alice Springs to watch the premiere of Bungalow Song, what they see will be beyond the realm of mere entertainment.
Young voices telling it like it is
Cameron Woodhead Belgian theatre collective Ontroerend Goed has a reputation for stirring the pot.
From the outside in
John Bailey Melbourne's Outer Urban Projects is exploring how place shapes identity and art.
Visual Arts
Art
Blake Prize looks beyond Christian teachings
ANDREW TAYLOR Depictions of Jesus dying on the cross are a ubiquitous feature of Christian places of worship.
QAGoMA director thinks big picture
NATALIE BOCHENSKI The director of the Queensland Art Gallery has revealed his exciting vision to revamp the facility to better display collections and provide an all-ages interactive learning space.
The artist as defiantly innocent reveller
STEVE DOW Michael Leunig failed his secondary education, and never went to art school.
Deep friezes in an icy landscape
Dewi Cooke John Kelly is setting sail to be artist-in-residence with the Australian Antarctic Division.
How the comic book became a work of Art
Stephen A. Russell US cartoonist Art Spiegelman uses words and pictures to create literary masterpieces.
Books FULL COVERAGE
Books
'Genocide is also women's business': author
Dwight Garner After finding a good Nazi husband, many SS wives became infant-carrying, gun-wielding hausfraus.
Rush film
Could The Book Thief steal an Oscar?
LINDA MORRIS The first reviews of the film adaptation of Markus Zusak's elegiac tale of a young girl living in Nazi Germany during World War II are out, and they're pretty glowing.
Books
Austen's classic joins list of literary reworks
LINDA MORRIS Jane Austen published six novels. Just six. She died before she completed the seventh.
Living in the danger zone
Janene Carey For a former journalist, gonzo travel writing has opened a new chapter in his life.
Undercover: book news
Susan Wyndham With Tim Winton's new novel Eyrie, coming out later this month from Penguin, the author is everywhere.
Full coverage
Video
John Landis talks 'Blues Brothers', 'Animal House' ... and politics
In town for the Melbourne Festival, legendary director John Landis discusses the film that inspired a career that produced classics such as The Blues Brothers, Animal House and Trading Places.
The Somali Peace Band
Australian artist Royce Ng presents a remarkable chronicle of a musical collaboration that reaches across the Indian Ocean, bridging continents and cultures.
Exhibition spans 70 years of artist's work
Inge King, a 97-year-old sculptor famed for many large public works, talks about her retrospective exhibition currently at Australian Galleries on Smith St.
City and Colour - Thirst
To celebrate featuring on our mid-year Best Of 2013 list, Canadian singer-songwriter Dallas Green, known as City and Colour, plays an exclusive acoustic set of Thirst.
Ben Salter - Semi Pro Gamer
Ben Salter drops into our studio for a live performance of Semi Pro Gamer.
Jen Cloher plays 'David Bowie Eyes'
Jen Cloher performs an exclusive version of her song 'David Bowie Eyes' from her new album In Blood Memory.
A moment with Martha
Martha Wainwright sings - Four black sheep
King Kong, inside the ape
The magnificent King Kong puppet has been unveiled, now take a look under its skin to see how creators put it together.
The Skywhale's first flight
Sculptor Patricia Piccinini takes her art to the skies, constructing a hot air balloon in the shape of a whale, in honour of Canberra's centenary. Vision provided.
Photo galleries
Proximity
State-of-the-art video technology and dance combine in Australian Dance Theatre’s Proximity. Nine colourful dancers train video cameras on each other to create images on three large screens upstage, including the multi-limbed deities from Hindu mythology. Proximity at Arts Centre Melbourne, Playhouse from Thursday 15 – Sunday 18 August.
Carol Jerrems: Photographic Artist
Carol Jerrems burst on to the Melbourne arts scene in the 1970s, making a name for herself with photos of people living on the outer-edges of society.
The Red Queen, MONA
Based on a Lewis Carroll character, The Red Queen exhibition goes through the looking glass at Hobart's Museum of New and Old Art.
Swan Lake soars
The Australian Ballet performs a contemporary classic at the State Theatre.
55th La Biennale of Venice
A press preview of the 55th edition of the Venice Biennale of Arts in Venice, northern Italy, Tuesday, May 28, 2013.
Melbourne street art
What started as a hobby for Melbourne's Dean Sunshine has turned into a book cataloguing Melbourne's famous graffiti.
