Cement Fondu, a new exhibition and live arts space, opens this Saturday in Paddington.

It drew some of the biggest names in the nation's fashion industry including Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, but the Fashion Ball proved disappointing.

Cockatoo Island's power generation room couldn't be a more perfect setting for a new installation from Yukinori Yanagi, a leading Japanese contemporary artist.

Acclaimed New Zealand writer Lloyd Jones has warned the world is losing its capacity for outrage and its citizens are turning into dumb and ineffective witnesses as catastrophe and crisis almost shift into the realm of spectacle.

Designers intent on experimentation are plumbing the past and exploiting the latest technologies in Melbourne Design Week

New works at the Museum of Old and New art reflect, and embody, its constant state of development.

These very different exhibitions show how important the right method of displaying a show is.

Art may not be a panacea but at the very least it asks us to think in a different way, or in this case, 30 different ways.

Two wildly contrasting exhibitions have been unveiled for next summer at the Art Gallery of NSW and the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the Sydney International Art Series.

There's plenty to see and do in Canberra this week

In 2001 the Dutch graphic design group Experimental Jetset (EJ) produced a Beatles T-shirt. The idea was deceptively simple: replace the faces of the most recognisable band in the world with just their names. After all, everyone knows which band they belong to. The shirt sold surprisingly well. EJ would design two more, listing the Rolling Stones and Ramones. The real success lies not in the number of T-shirts sold, but what they spawned. People began sending them T-shirts in the same format: a plain shirt set in Helvetica type. An ampersand at the end of each line gave the impression the list was a piece of concrete poetry, as much as a pop-cultural tribute. Seventeen years later, the designers still receive band T-shirts with names they've never heard of. 

Central to the NGV's Colony: Australia 1770-1861 exhibition is the development of European art in Australia, but curators are quick to emphasise that important counterpoints to this glorified colonial narrative are included along the way. This juxtaposition of celebrated European works and First Nations' cultural objects produces an agile dialogue, much subtler than the complementary exhibition Colony: Frontier Wars, though equally as potent in challenging the Commonwealth's preferred interpretation of its nationhood. 

A literary treasure trove of 21,000 novels, novellas and short stories has been discovered in an archive of Australian historical newspapers.

Thousands of forgotten novels have been uncovered by ANU researchers into early Australian newspapers

• EXCLUSIVE

The National Art School is to resurrect a prestigious drawing prize canned six years ago.

Prolific sculptor Matthew Harding, whose public artworks are all over Canberra, has died aged 53

The Art Gallery of NSW has lost a senior executive just days after it was announced the job of the gallery's director was to be advertised and as its expansion plans reaches delicate pre-approval stage.

• SPECTRUM

Riding the political and social upheavals of the 20th century, Cartier developed a unique style that made it the favourite of film stars, royals and maharajahs.

Zadok Ben-David, Kimsooja and Lisa Reihana are among the artists not to miss at this year's festival.

Australian Museum launches its inaugural festival of Aboriginal and Pacific Island culture this week.

There's plenty to see and do in Canberra this week, from writing programs to photography exhibitions.

Rarely has furniture design been so striking – and so much fun. Inspired by Pop art, Happenings and conceptual art, the work of the Italian Radical Movement is among the most recognisable of the 20th century.

A three-day festival aims to cut down on graffiti and vandalism in the southern suburbs.

The massive sculpture is the harbinger of a major exhibition later in the year.

A new exhibition at the National Museum of Australia is a fascinating insight into the pearling industry.