Culture
June, 2019
Seoul trained: K-pop and Blackpink
Culture / Music
Trying to find meaning in the carefully formulated culture of K-pop
June, 2019
The chthonic realms explored in Robert Macfarlane’s ‘Underland’
Culture / Books
Cave systems, mines, urban sewers, mycelial networks, moulins and more
June, 2019
‘The Essential Duchamp’ at the Art Gallery of NSW
Culture / Art
A comprehensive exhibition of the 20th century’s most influential artist
Most Popular
At home with David Walsh
Social media and streaming services are changing what and how we watch
➌ ‘Animalia’ by Jean-Baptiste Del Amo
The French author delivers a pastoral that turns on human cruelty
Richard Flanagan delivers the inaugural Boisbouvier Lecture
Books
April, 2019
‘Room for a Stranger’ by Melanie Cheng
The medico-writer delivers a novel driven less by storyline than accumulated observation
April, 2019
The desperate, secretive drama: ‘Choice Words’ edited by Louise Swinn
Personal stories consider questions of choice, legality and stigma surrounding abortion
March, 2019
Consciousness is at the heart of the celebrated author’s body of work
March, 2019
The bestselling author delivers a nuanced examination of family tragedy
March, 2019
Missing witnesses: Valeria Luiselli’s ‘Lost Children Archive’
The Mexican ‘documentary fiction’ writer delivers a polyphonic road trip
March, 2019
‘Who Killed My Father’ by Édouard Louis (trans. Lorin Stein)
Political rage fuels the French author’s account of a fraught father–son relationship
Music
May, 2019
An obscure celebration of ‘Disintegration’
The Cure at the Sydney Opera House, Vivid LIVE, May 27, 2019
April, 2019
Starstruck: Reckoning with Michael Jackson’s legacy
What do we do with the music after ‘Leaving Neverland’?
March, 2019
A black woman in space: Solange’s ‘When I Get Home’
Songs distilled from the quiet expanses of high art and black culture
March, 2019
The Monthly music wrap: March 2019
Koffee’s debut EP brings a jolt of youthful energy, and new releases from local projects with global sensibilities
February, 2019
Clicks, plinks, hoots and thuds: Matmos’s ‘Plastic Anniversary’
The American experimental duo embrace the ‘sounds’ of a ubiquitous material
February, 2019
The Monthly music wrap: February 2019
On the precarious state of live music in NSW and the impact of proposed festival-licensing laws
Film
April, 2019
Killer instincts: The ‘John Wick’ franchise
Keanu Reeves hones his stardom in the hyperreal violence of an assassin’s tale
April, 2019
A fugitive dream: Ben Hackworth’s ‘Celeste’
On the future of the Australian art film and forgetting the past
April, 2019
Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’
The contrary director’s 30-year quest comes to a suitably ludicrous end
April, 2019
Gabrielle Brady’s ‘The Island of Hungry Ghosts’
This new hybrid documentary casts Christmas Island in a hypnotically strange light
April, 2019
Doppelgangers duel in Jordan Peele’s ‘Us’
This new film is less about inequality than it is about horror’s subversive eye
March, 2019
Haruki to Highsmith: Lee Chang-dong’s ‘Burning’
Mr Ripley echoes through a masterful tale of class tensions in Seoul
Television
June, 2019
The screenwriters living with the crew of Mawson station
May, 2019
Streaming highlights: May 2019
‘When They See Us’ and ‘Catch-22’ examine flawed institutions, ‘Dead to Me’ astutely studies the living, and ‘Fleabag’ makes a must-see return
May, 2019
On ‘Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’, ‘Catastrophe’, ‘Broad City’, ‘You’re the Worst’, ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ and ‘Veep’
May, 2019
‘Veep’: No bad deed shall go punished
The sharp comedy bows out as Trump takes politics beyond satire
May, 2019
Streaming highlights: April 2019
‘Special’ and ‘Bonding’ look askance at sexual mores, ‘Killing Eve’ returns, and Beyoncé brings ‘Homecoming’ to Netflix
March, 2019
Streaming highlights: March 2019
‘The OA’ amplifies the intrigue, Gregg Araki’s streaming debut ‘Now Apocalypse’, and the wealth porn of ‘Billions’ returns
Art
June, 2019
‘Assembly’ by Angelica Mesiti at Venice Biennale
The democratic ideal is explored in the Australian Pavilion’s video installation
April, 2019
Leonard French’s Balzacian life
Reg MacDonald’s biography may return this Australian artist to the national imagination
April, 2019
Can ‘Eat the Problem’ solve the problem?
Mona’s new project explores our fraught ethics of consumption
April, 2019
‘Janet Laurence: After Nature’ at the MCA
This survey offers a root and branch study of the natural world’s fragility
March, 2019
The Australian artist opens up on the eve of a retrospective exhibition
February, 2019
Ahead of a major survey at the Art Gallery of SA, the artist talks about the anxiety that informs his work
Theatre
April, 2019
On Humphries’s brand of confronting comedy and the renaming of the Barry Award
February, 2019
‘Manus’: troubling and obligatory viewing
An Iranian play brings stories of Australia’s offshore detention centres to the Adelaide Festival
February, 2019
Barrie Kosky’s reimagined ‘The Magic Flute’ heads for Australia
The director on why his film-inspired production almost didn’t happen
January, 2019
Ned Kelly as you’ve never seen him before
Composer Luke Styles on his opera that casts the bushranger in a new light
December, 2018
Performing philosophy: ‘La Passion de Simone’ at the Sydney Festival
The creatives behind this Sydney Chamber Opera production on the extreme empathy of Simone Weil
October, 2018
Eddie Perfect goes to Broadway
The Australian composer has two musicals – ‘Beetlejuice’ and ‘King Kong’ – opening in New York
Dance
April, 2019
Form and content collide at Dance Massive
Choreography meets politics at this contemporary dance festival
September, 2018
Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company is bringing light and shade to Australia
A conversation with members of the Italian company ahead of their tour to Brisbane
June, 2018
Bangarra’s latest production explores Aboriginal Australians’ sophisticated farming practices
December, 2017
Dance and the digital: An interview with Wayne McGregor
The Sydney Festival-bound show’s choreographer loves mixing the body with technology
July, 2017
‘Bennelong’ by Bangarra Dance Theatre
Sydney Opera House (touring Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne)
July, 2015
Body Electric’s jazz ballet for adults
Architecture
June, 2018
Two worlds at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale
The consumption of space, land and habitat is Australia’s focus at the world’s pre-eminent architecture event
June, 2018
A new four-day tour in Tasmania is owned and guided by Aboriginal people
September, 2017
Beautiful on the outside … the tragedy of Bennelong Point
May, 2017
Brutalist masterpiece or harbour eyesore? Sydney’s Sirius building faces an uncertain future
October, 2016
The Australian Islamic Centre is notable for what it isn’t as much as for what it is
August, 2016
Durbach Block Jaggers is a practice in argument
Fashion
November, 2017
Victoria Lee takes on the Victoria’s Secret runway
September, 2014
‘The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier’ at the National Gallery of Victoria
November, 2013
‘Modern Love: Fashion visionaries from the FIDM Museum LA’
At the Bendigo Art Gallery
June, 2013
The iconic Australian brand has a new co-owner
October, 2011
Romance was born - ‘The Oracle’, 2011
June, 2010
Fiction
November, 2017
Unfinished business: A short story
Can a young wartime couple pick up where they left off?
January, 2015
Hamish Hamilton; $32.99
November, 2014
October, 2014
The pencil and the damage done
The perverse attraction of autobiographical fiction
June, 2014
‘All the Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr
HarperCollins; $29.99
March, 2014
Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ‘Boyhood Island’
The third volume of the epic autobiographical novel ‘My Struggle’
Poetry
September, 2018
Barron Field and the myth of terra nullius
How a minor poet made a major historical error
March, 2015
Clive James’ ‘Sentenced to Life’ and Les Murray’s ‘Waiting for the Past’
September, 2014
A century of Dylan Thomas
November, 2012
Meeting Ko Un
September, 2012
'Radar' by Kevin Brophy and Nathan Curnow
September, 2012
Peter Steele (1939–2012)