The Town Hall Affair is a recreation of a 1971 debate between Germaine Greer and other feminists and Norman Mailer. It feels exceptionally prescient in 2018.
An exhibition at the Melbourne Museum tells the history of colonialism in East New Britain, PNG, from the perspective of the local people. This is history from the ground up, told through film, art and music.
2017 gave us a blockbuster female superhero, radical faerie realness rituals, and the ‘frenetic flapping of male genitalia’. Here’s what our arts critics made of all that.
Barbara and the Camp Dogs transformed Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre into a pub gig. But what started as a comedy became a searing tragedy about Australia’s inability to listen to Indigenous people.
Bangarra’s current season of three new works, Ones Country, is uneven in parts but worth seeing for the diversity of Indigenous stories from some new choreographic voices.
Clay Stories, a travelling exhibition, showcases ceramic art from Indigenous artists across the country. It is a triumphant display of specific stories and Dreamings, standing against cultural and political amnesia.
Muriel Heslop stole Australia’s heart when she debuted on screen in 1994. Now she gets a loving, ABBA-filled musical tribute, that is definitely not terrible.
The paintings in Del Kathryn Barton’s new show at NGV Australia are visually stunning and painstakingly executed. But the women depicted are often de-personalised objects or headless cauldrons of destructive passion.
The makers of Justice League embed the film in a post-9/11, post-global warming, post-Brexit, post-Trump context. But it is loud and disappointing with some genuinely unimaginative action sequences.
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne