Hugo Weaving’s Macbeth dwells on the isolation and introspection of one of Shakespeare’s great tragic leads. Photo: Brett Boardman.
Sydney Theatre Company
Sydney Theatre Company’s new production of Macbeth may draw attention for its star, Hugo Weaving, but the most powerful agent of this production is the theatrical space. Director Kip Williams has inverted…
Who wants to be Hercules? Judging by the huge amount of internet interest in the diet and fitness regime of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, former professional wrestler and star of the latest Hercules film…
We hear a great deal about China’s future – but how is it treating its past? Sangzhutse Fortress in Shigatse, Tibet – after restoration work.
Photo: Tongji University
For most Australians, mention of China probably does not evoke preserved buildings and landscapes in the way the English countryside does or the Italian centro storico. But a new exhibition, Envisioning…
Australian writing for young adults has moved on as has our thinking about what it means to be gay.
Pat Reynolds
Young adult fiction and complex themes go hand in hand – not least in one of the most recent entries to this field. Melbourne-based writer Eli Glasman’s debut novel The Boy’s Own Manual to Being a Proper…
Brave New Clan presents the “X-factor” us mob see among ourselves all the time to a wider audience.
Foxtel 2014
Urban skyline, as seen from inside a medium-density apartment block, opens Australian director Leah Purcell’s Who We Are: Brave New Clan (2014), which was broadcast on Foxtel’s Bio Channel last night…
A solo show at the Saatchi means an artist has already entered orbit.
Pelham Communications and Prudential Eye Awards
Ben Quilty is the first Australian artist to hold a solo show at the Saatchi Gallery in London. Opening last Friday and running until August 3, the exhibition is a big deal for Quilty, naturally, but also…
The samurai is the focus of a major exhibition on display at Melbourne’s NGV. Utagawa Yoshitsuya, The death of Kusunoki Masatsura (19th century) colour woodblock (triptych) (a-c) 35.9x74.0 cm (image) (overall) (a-c) 36.4x74.0 cm (sheet) (overall).
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
A new exhibition has opened at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) on the figure of the Japanese samurai. Bushido: Way of the Samurai explores popular conceptions of the samurai – as well as their lesser…
A new exhibition in Brisbane takes food as its subject and includes this work by Darren Sylvester. (‘The explanation is boring. It’s simple. I don’t care’, 2006. Lightjet print on paper, 120 x 160cm.)
Queensland Art Gallery/Gallery of Modern Art
In Rolf de Heer’s new film Charlie’s Country there are four food moments: deep-fried fast food; tinned and packaged food (abandoned when the car runs out of petrol); cooked-in-coals barramundi; and green…
An exhibition of the Fremantle realists sheds new light on the work of this pioneering group.
Ken Wadrop, Action painting , 1978, acrylic paint on canvas, 92 x 123.5 cm. Fremantle Arts Centre
There is a sense of elation when you see something familiar as if for the first time. Looking is one thing but seeing is something entirely different and for the three Western Australian artists identified…
The limitations of the theatre become the production’s emotional heart.
Michele Mossop
Bell Shakespeare’s new production of William Shakespeare’s Henry V – which opened in Canberra on June 14 – interrogates the complexities of war through a unique framing device: its scenes are played out…
It’s impossible to overstate the way this kind of viewing makes Altman’s ouevre newly accessible.
3 Women, Sydney Film Festival
For me the most exciting way to negotiate the ample program of the Sydney Film Festival (SFF) is to focus on its retrospectives, and this year the lens is on the American film directors Robert Altman and…
A sense of unease that comes with visiting the past is palpable in several of the works on show.
Anna Carey, Costa Vista 2014, giclée print mounted on aluminium, Museum of Brisbane
Last year I re-read Johnno, David Malouf’s 1975 novel, with a group of students. I was intrigued to find out how young men and women living in Brisbane today would relate to a novel that has cast such…
Kiefer Sutherland, crazed in Roman evil.
Entertainment One
Take one brooding hunk, enslaved as a gladiator after the brutal slaughter of his family, who seeks revenge against the evil Roman empire. Lay on plenty of set-piece spectacular arena battles through which…
John Constable, Sketch for ‘Hadleigh Castle’, c.1828–9.
Tate
There is currently something of a Kenneth Clark renaissance, with an exhibition devoted to him just opened at Tate Britain, and a new Civilisation planned by the BBC. If there is anything to be gained…
This unconventional review of an exhibition, Jinjilngali, Kurlukuku Minpiya, Yirdingali, now on show at the Vivien Anderson Gallery in Melbourne, also constitutes a tribute to three Warlpiri women artists…
Corrado Giaquinto, Italian 1703–1766, worked in Spain 1753–62, Allegory of Justice and Peace (Allegoria della Giustizia e della Pace) c.1753–54 oil on canvas, 216.0 x 325.0 cm.
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid (P00104), Spanish Royal Collection
Nationalism is not always a good thing where understanding art is concerned, but in the case of Italian Masterpieces from Spain’s Royal Court, Museo del Prado on show at the National Gallery of Victoria…
An exhibition on display in Ballarat charts the fortunes of the Scots in Australia in the 19th century.
John Glover, Ben Lomond, c1840. Oil on canvas 76.8 x 117.1 cm. Rex Nan Kivell Collection, National Gallery of Australia and National Library of Australia. Courtesy of Art Gallery of Ballarat
If there is one painting that shows the dilemma at the heart of For Auld Lang Syne, an exhibition devoted to images of Scottish Australia currently showing at the Art Gallery of Ballarat, it is John Glover’s…
Can we be Frank? (Inquisitive face, eyebrow raised…)
Artificial Eye Film Co Ltd UK
The run up to the release of Lenny Abrahamson’s latest film, Frank, was characterised by a certain amount of perplexity. Unsurprising, given the posters emblazoned with that enormous papier-mâché mask…
Chris Lilley has long been a high maintenance love object. Last night, the first episode of Jonah From Tonga was broadcast on ABC1. Critics have had an easy time finding humour in socially “well-placed…
Australian visual artist Sue Ford built a reputation as a feminist maverick through her 23 solo exhibitions from 1964 until her death in 2009, and a major exhibition of her work is on display at the National…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne