From humble beginnings, poet Bruce Dawe became a genial voice, capturing everyday humanity with wry focus. For many Australians, he provided a first taste of verse.
New grants to aid the arts and culture sector are welcome. But as we look for distraction and meaning in isolation, a bigger correction is needed to how the government values Australian creativity.
Kamsani Bin Salleh and Matthew McVeigh, Foodland, 2018, found metal sign and acrylic, 125 x 400 cm.
Janet Holmes à Court Collection
This Perth exhibition is a raucous, overwhelming, exciting and at times confusing immersion into ideas about national identity.
Peter Coleman-Wright and Merlyn Quaife during a dress rehearsal of Bliss in 2010: it is one of few important local operas over the past three decades to have been staged a second time.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
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?
Dorothea MacKellar’s My Country, with its paen to a sunburnt landscape, excoriated Australians for their nostalgic love of English ‘grey-blue’ countryside and English weather.
Mark Wassell/flickr
There’s a fine tradition of Australian poetry harnessing the corrective power of insult. In doing so, it prompts us to face hard questions about our history and identity.
The ‘White Australia’ ideology was commercialised and used to sell things from soaps and games to pineapple slices.
Multicultural Research Library
Although politicians claim to place a great deal of importance on the idea of the fair go, there are still significant ways in which Australian society seems to depart from this idea.
Dallas Rogers speaks with Alanna Kamp on how racism and sexism has excluded lives and experiences of Chinese-Australian women from our historical record.
Our national anthem tells us we are young and free. Blindly, many Australians continue to accept this.
AAP Image/Julian Smith
It’s every performer’s dream. To stand in front of a huge live audience and perform the national anthem. So why did Deborah Cheetham decline the chance to sing at the 2015 AFL Grand Final?
Hip-hop artist 360 caused a stir this week with his comments on the Southern Cross.
AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy
Australian hip-hop artist and rapper 360 (Matt Colwell) caused an uproar earlier in the week when he said on Q&A that he identified the Australian flag and the Southern Cross with racism. 360 announced…
A real national conversation about democratic values will be inclusive and challenging – not fear-mongering.
Is Azfar Ahmad/Flickr
Events in the Middle East that have both shocked and horrified us seem to have opened the doors to anyone who wants to criticise Islam, raise concerns about multiculturalism and romanticise an age when…