Lisa Reihana’s video installation Emissaries combines Indigenous actors and performance techniques to reenact Captain Cook’s encounters across the Pacific.
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Speaking with: satirist Armando Ianucci on The Death of Stalin
The Conversation, CC BY44.1 MB (download)
Armando Iannucci, the satirist and director behind the film The Death of Stalin spoke with Associate Professor Stephen Harrington, an expert on political satire.
The Death of Stalin has been banned in Russia. While the film is hardly disrespectful to Russian people, it does make Putin uncomfortable with its satirical take of leadership.
The Vikings have become synonymous with voyages and violence, but a new exhibition at the Melbourne Museum demonstrates their domestic and spiritual side.
Brisbane alternative rock musicians Dead Letter Circus make affective and powerful music, epitomised by their album Aesthesis.
Artists have long tackled global issues, from war to human rights. While Picasso’s celebrated Guernica may not have stopped the Spanish Civil War (or any war), art still holds value, as witness and as truth teller.
Dance can’t literally tell history, but it can tell historical truths, as shown by Akram Khan’s Xenos at the Adelaide Festival.
Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, released 40 years ago, marked the formal beginnings of ambient music. It is still provoking composers and audiences to contemplate new ways of listening.
In 1497 Girolamo Savonarola burned books and art in Florence in the most infamous act of European cultural desecration. A year later, he met the same fate.
Michael Mohammed Ahmad’s novel The Lebs is a realistic portrayal of teenage boys in Western Sydney.
Stigma about black or African hair reflects deep-seated politics around race and history.
The 21st Sydney Biennale is the first to be directed by a curator of non-Western heritage. While the number of artists is modest, lost quantity is made up by quality.
Today, beauty counts for little in the judgement of works of art. But our felt experience of beauty connects us with an object’s maker, revealing a pure moment of humanity.
Colony at the NGV pairs colonial art with Indigenous responses, in an effort to create dialogue about Australia’s history.
In the early days of colonial Tasmania, the British used threatening picture boards to communicate with Aboriginal people, giving them a choice between conciliation and death.
The Great War uses scale models to give a worm’s eye view of titanic violence. In Kings of War, by contrast, lethal events are viewed from the unsteady perspective of leaders.
Through virtual reality you can now explore a sunken ship, suspend weightless in space, or visit Angkor Wat. So why is the real experience still better?
The origin of around 300 of Australia’s Aboriginal languages lies in Queensland, about 6,000 years ago.
Mongolia’s important historical sites are under threat from climate change and looting - and one exacerbates the other.
For centuries, Mary Magdalene was wrongly depicted as a repentant whore, diminishing her vital role as witness to the resurrection. A new film portraying her life does much to restore her character.
Essays On Air: Joan of Arc, our one true superhero
The Conversation22.1 MB (download)
Joan of Arc has been depicted as a national heroine, nationalist symbol, a rebellious heretic and a goodly saint. Forget Wonder Woman and Batman – Jeanne d’Arc may be our one and only true superhero.
Neil Armfield’s production of the Brett Dean opera Hamlet is a confronting three hours in the theatre, but then so is Shakespeare’s play. The second act is devastating in its emotional impact.
Clinton Walker’s Deadly Woman Blues was a missed opportunity and a lesson in how not to tell other people’s stories.
Memorial brings Alice Oswald’s poetic retelling of the Iliad to the stage, with its furious indictment of war and its aftermath.
Australian artist Elizabeth Durack became infamous for her use of an Aboriginal nom de plume in 1990s. But in the 1960s, when the country was striving for independence from Australia, she portrayed Papuan women with sensitivity.