Food is an increasingly popular ingredient in crime fiction, serving up insights into the character of the detective hero and adding spice to the mystery.
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For many years, the Miles Franklin award was a bastion of monoculture. But this year’s stories are a diverse reflection of Australia.
In 1979, the American satellite Skylab crashed in Western Australia. A new play imagines what happened to an Aboriginal family nearby.
There is nothing new about a shoe fetish. Fairy tales have long featured amazing, high-tech footwear: from seven-league boots to glass slippers to red shoes.
In the midst of the same-sex marriage debate, Melbourne held The Coming Back Out Ball, an evening to honour queer elders.
At a time when even accountants are looking for a more compelling understanding of value, it is imperative that the arts – where individual experience is central – resist the evangelical call of quantification.
Charles Blackman forged an urbanised image of Australia that for most, was more familiar than the mythic landscapes of Sidney Nolan or Arthur Boyd. Yet though familiar, it remains uncomfortable.
West of Sunshine takes place over a single day, following Jim, a courier of increasingly dangerous sorts, as he delivers packages across Melbourne.
Nicki Minaj is the preeminent female rapper. Her latest album Queen embraces a kind of girl power that has been criticised both within and outside the rap world.
Franklin, who has died aged 76 in Detroit, was a church girl first and foremost. She was the master of the gospel form.
Australian operas have been written about many pressing topics - from the Stolen Generations to the Lindy Chamberlain case - but few have been staged a second time. What is going wrong?
Unlike the Greek heroes, many Mesopotamian mythical figures have slipped into obscurity. An exception to this is their representation in comics, such as Gilgamesh, who served alongside Captain America as an Avenger.
Behrouz Boochani wrote his memoir of incarceration on Manus Island one text message at a time. Translating this work of ‘horrific surrealism’ from Farsi to English was a profoundly philosophical experience.
To Kill a Mockingbird is no sermon. Its lessons are presented in effortless style, tackling the complexity of race issues with startling clarity and a strong sense of reality.
Aboriginal children are rarely named in the colonial archive. But the remarkable story of Dirimera and Conaci reveals two boys who, while removed from their land, had a keen sense of sovereignty.
In this grim and often bloody tale of dog-groomer Marcello, the canines steal every scene they are in.
As a bushranger in the Kelly gang, Steve Hart took to dressing as a woman and riding side-saddle to avoid detection. Sidney Nolan’s painting captures Hart’s adolescent cockiness, bravery, and foolhardy bluster.
A pared-down, humorous and intimate monologue, this production explores the human dimension of a political movement. It is a challenge to tacit silence and collective amnesia in Australia also.
Our use of social media platforms such as Instagram is changing our relationship to nature, and – at least for now – not necessarily for the better.
Like a good pop ballad, I Used To Be Normal is energetic, colourful and masterfully anchored by a deep and earnest sentimentality.
The latest scary shark film, The Meg, opens this week. But fictionalised tales of monster fish blind us to the important role sharks play in maintaining the health of our oceans.
Reading the poem Eurydice to her students unleashed surprising emotions for Stephanie Trigg. But literature works in mysterious, unpredictable ways, highlighting the impossibility of trigger warnings.
Plagued by production woes for 25 years, The Man Who Killed Don Quixote embraces the spirit of its 17th-century source material. But unlike de Cervantes, Gilliam uses the female characters as props for the hero’s story.
Tales of giants can be found around the world - in Wales, in Australia, and the Pacific Islands. They helped people explain the sometimes cataclysmic changes to the environment they saw around them.
The 2018 Tarrawarra Biennial explores the act of creation itself, dissolving boundaries between mind/body, physical/spiritual, and form/content. But the experience in the gallery is sometimes something of an anti-climax.