Today the phrase ‘all roads leads to Rome’ means that there’s more than one way to reach the same goal. But in Ancient Rome, all roads really did lead to the eternal city, which was at the centre of a vast road network.
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The scale of fast fashion is so massive it can easily eclipse sustainability initiatives. We need investment in new technologies to revolutionise the industry.
Melbourne has seen tens of thousands of new apartments constructed over recent years, and apartment brands are flourishing. We can see striking typographic similarities with another economic frenzy: the 1870s cattle boom.
Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth woke up the world to climate change. But with its sequel hitting cinemas now, it’s not clear that ‘big issue’ documentaries make a difference in the long term.
What would possess an Antarctic expedition to take dairy cows to the icy continent? Back in 1933, Admiral Byrd did so for reasons of image-making, publicity and territorial ambition.
Despite dire predictions, bookstores are doing well: they are curators of taste and community hubs. But their challenges are many – from the arrival of Amazon Down Under to a ‘post-truth’ climate that devalues knowledge.
One of the great satirical achievements of the mass media era, the editorial cartoon, is losing its centrality in the digital age. Yet the ‘visual terrorism’ of cartoons can cut through the verbiage of political commentary.
Netflix’s edgy teen dramas attract criticism, but it is targeting a demographic that Australian broadcasters have almost entirely abandoned. We need more local stories that speak to teenagers.
Jane Campion’s second series of Top of the Lake, which premiered in Melbourne at the weekend, is an ominous, lyrical, genre-bending exploration of the sex trade.
In Indigenous culture, dingoes were prized as companions, garments and hunting aids. Europeans later tried to tame dingoes as ‘pets’ but their wild nature has prevailed.
In late 2015, 200,000 refugees a month were arriving on the Greek island of Lesvos. Tasos Markou went there to photograph their plight - and ended up joining the locals to help the new arrivals.
In the 20 years since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the monarchy has been remade largely in her own image.
A central idea in the Iliad - a poetic work focused on the war for Troy - is the inevitability of death. The poem held a special place in antiquity, and has resonated in the millennia since.
Apes on film once wore monkey suits but today’s actors are drawing on techniques of method acting to bring complex, motion captured simian characters to life.
Contemporary artists from Judy Chicago to Stelarc have made art from blood. And an exhibition at Melbourne’s new Science Gallery addresses our ambivalent attitudes to this life-giving fluid.
In the late 1930s, Australia sought to restrict the flow of refugees, ruling that musicians were ‘unsuitable’ as migrants. Yet some talented Jewish musicians did arrive here and their work has enriched our cultural life.
This year’s annual Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes both reaffirm traditions and confirm new directions in the arts establishment.
An Italian-born-woman-turned-Sydney-dwelling-man, Eugenia Falleni was convicted of murder in 1920. Researching a novel about Falleni left this author literally, and figuratively, at sea.
Hip hop often gets a bad rap but for therapists and teachers it can be a transformative tool.
The music of Dr G. Yunupiŋu, who has died at just 46, draws strength and inspiration from Manikay, the sacred song tradition performed by the Yolŋu when conducting public ceremonies.
Debussy’s Clair de Lune, meaning ‘moonlight’, is one of the most easily recognised pieces of music, but its origins are complex. The piece was influenced by poetry, Baroque music and the Impressionist movement.
Is birdsong simply a hard-wired, functional, primitive sound – or could we call it ‘music’? Australia’s pied butcherbirds show there are surprising overlaps between birds’ and humans’ musical abilities.
Women are making inroads in the gaming industry but progress is slow. We need more flexible workplaces, and perhaps even hiring quotas, to fix the gender imbalance.
A major exhibition of Jenny Watson’s work at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art spans 40 years in the creative life of a rule-breaking Australian artist.
The standard of the 2017 Wynne finalists is as haphazard as previous years, hampered by a sense of tokenism and conventional landscapes, but works by Napanyapa Yunupingu and Juz Kitson stand out.