We constantly use electronic devices to distract ourselves from the tedium associated with waiting. Yet being bored can be a creative activity.
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Arts + Culture – Articles, Analysis, Comment
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Was John Keats a refugee in his day? A workshop for refugees, migrants and artists took place recently at Keats-Shelley House and the story of the great Romantic poet’s life and death hit a nerve.
David Bowie was the tasteful thief and practised faker, and his 1974 album Diamond Dogs borrowed from everything to create a sublime post-apocalyptic soundscape.
American cinema mines Greek myth most strongly at times of profound social anxiety. In the age of Trump, we are already seeing key political battlegrounds framed as underworld quests in film.
US and Japanese tech companies are building fighting megabots to kicktstart what they envisage as a sporting franchise on the scale of Formula 1.
Ahead of International Peace Day celebrity musicians like Yoko Ono have released music for peace. But the same qualities that bring us together around music can also inflame conflict, from the Yugoslav civil wars to Northern Ireland.
Kurt Cobain killed himself a week before this album was due to come out. It became a perfect soundtrack to Gen X’s grief and with its raw, angry, feminist-inspired, grunge sound, remains a classic.
A new exhibition features more than 50 works by Fred Williams, centred on the You Yangs peaks, west of Melbourne. They illuminate a breakthrough moment in Australian art.
Australia has more than 200 Big Things, from the heritage-listed Pineapple to a giant Captain Cook. What are we to do with these structures as they age and decay? And should we be building new ones?
A retrospective exhibition of Gareth Sansom’s 60-year career is bold, provocative and exquisitely crafted.
Australia has a reputation for swearing. Yet this sits at odds with laws that criminalise offensive words.
Laser Beak Man and its superheroic puppetry will delight young and old at the Brisbane Festival.
From The Smiths to Kendrick Lamar, Conversation readers tell us their favourite albums.
In Different Class, Pulp got fans singing and dancing to searing commentaries on class and privilege.
The AIDS crisis arrived in Australia in 1982 and triggered an enormous (and successful) public health response, largely driven by volunteers. These people, often from marginalised communities in their own right, deserve recognition in Australia’s proud volunteer tradition.
The songs of Tribal Voice offered hope and strength to generations of Yolŋu people and gave audiences elsewhere a rare insight into the resolve and aspirations of Indigenous Australia.
On September 29 1941, Nazis murdered more than 30,000 Jews in a ravine outside Kiev. Dmitri Shostakovich’s 13th Symphony, Babi Yar, is a damning critique of the Soviet Union’s lack of recognition of the massacre, and a condemnation of Stalinism.
The Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication closed out hip-hop’s Golden Age with a kaleidoscope of jazz-infused beats, bratty punk interludes and a deeper appreciation for storytelling.
Australians displays a consistently miserly approach to public art, with typically miniscule budgets. Cloud Arch will demonstrate Sydney’s cultural leadership - for a very reasonable price tag.
Big Heart at Theatreworks questions Australia’s generosity through the tale of a woman who adopts a child from five continents.
The Cure’s seventh studio album was an 18-track, 70-minute plus extravagance of pure theatre and dark romance.
The production Per Te, by circus troupe Compagnia Finzi Pasca, seeks to reaffirm our humanity in face of an often cold and capricious world.
In Hounds of Love, Kate Bush’s extraordinary vocal performances are the musical equivalent of speaking in tongues. There are few more thrilling, literate, and ambitious works of popular music.
The history of the library is replete with mechanical marvels. More than collections of books, libraries are social, cultural and technological institutions that house the very idea of a society.
Rhonda Senbergs photographed the Australian art world for over 25 years until her death in 1998. From Fred Williams to Bob Hawke to Margaret Olley, many were captured by her lens.