Street artist Rone's return to his home town gallery is sure to draw crowds — but his definition of 'beauty' is conventional and narrow.
Clarice Beckett, Australia, 1887 - 1935, The red sunshade, 1932, Melbourne, oil on board; Gift of Alastair Hunter OAM and the late Tom Hunter in memory of Elizabeth through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2019, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide.
AGSA
Known for her soft capturing of tonal shifts and poignant moments, painter Clarice Beckett's legacy was almost lost to time and decay. Now her work is being celebrated in a major exhibition.
Eryn Jean Norvill in STC’s inventive adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s 1890 novel.
STC/Dan Boud
Actor Eryn Jean Norvill's portrayal of all the characters in The Portrait of Dorian Gray triumphantly illustrates Oscar Wilde's notion of the self as a form of performance.
While the name of the season - now online - suggests breaking through opera's glass ceiling, the violent imagery fits the context of ecological disaster, inequality, mental illness, and dystopia.
Bush Fire At Top Yalgamungken 2015. Collection: Art at Swiss Re.
Image courtesy: Martin Browne Contemporary
Though galleries have since closed their doors, this reviewer got to see Mavis Ngallametta's works in all their glory. Their birdseye view of Country provides a perspective we're missing right now.
Ibrahim Mahama’s No Friend but the Mountains (2020). Installation view at Cockatoo Island.
Photograph: Zan Wimberley
The 22nd Biennale of Sydney is testament to the capacity of art and exhibitions to move beyond reflection to lead dialogue, especially at times of crisis and cancellations.
Two girls in white (1904) is a composite study of three of Ramsay’s sisters, who cared for him before his death from tuberculosis.
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Hugh Ramsay's Two girls in white, was painted just two years before he died at the age of 28 in 1906. It is the central work in the National Gallery of Australia's survey exhibition.
The script for Exit Strategies was developed by performer Mish Grigor during an artist’s residency in the UK, against the backdrop of Brexit.
Bryony Jackson
A new show by indie performer Mish Grigor, with Aphids Theatre, explores all the exit opportunities that are available to us - and some doors that are better left closed.
Fully Sikh is a significant cultural and artistic achievement that feeds our hunger for sharing stories.
Daniel J Grant/BSSTC
From Perth’s Barking Gecko Theatre and the Black Swan State Theatre Company, Fully Sikh is Australia’s first professional theatrical work about growing up Sikh in Australia.
Leigh Melrose as Brett Whiteley in Opera Australia’s 2019 production of Whiteley at the Sydney Opera House. The opera focuses on the artist’s addictions and his relationship with his wife.
Prudence Upton
A new opera focuses more on the personal life of artist Brett Whiteley than his artistic creations. As the opera reveals, a life like Whiteley’s does not offer a clear moral message.
Steven Oliver’s Bigger and Blacker, which premiered at the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, calls for more engagement between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
Claudio Raschella
Steven Oliver's new cabaret show is an exhilarating journey through hard-hitting stories about success, love, depression and racism.
Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, Rear view 2018 (still),
high definition digital video, multi-channel sound, 85:11 mins
Courtesy of the artists Photo: Andrew Curtis
Through animation, video, light and sound, Theatre is Lying exposes how visual art, performance and theatrical devices can interrogate what is real and what is not.
Leah Ashwood, Jasper Lloyd, and Texas Watterston in The School (2018).
Bronte Pictures, Head Gear Films, Kreo Films FZ
There is nothing to prepare us for the shock to the senses in the National Gallery of Victoria's latest exhibition combining the works of M. C. Escher with Japanese design firm nendo.
André Rieu performs in his Sydney Town Hall performance.
André Rieu Productions
Malouf's late return to poetry seems to bring him back in a new way to steadying poems that do justice to the open gaze, the sly wit, the swift imagination and the poise he has in spades.
Jodie Whittaker finally takes over as the first woman to play the Doctor in the long-running TV series. But that's not all that's new as the show make a welcome return to our screens.
Geoffrey Rush as Basil Hunter on a ferry near Luna Park Sydney in Fred Schepsi’s The Eye of the Storm (2011).
Matt Nettheim
A major exhibition of treasures from ancient Rome presents a distinctly old-fashioned tale of the empire's rise and expansion, which is out of step with contemporary scholarly thinking.
Principal Fellow (Hon), Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne