Enough with the charming, naughty funny-guy rants. There are too many in a new anthology of Australian comedy writing – and women display a superior comic imagination.
The Andromeda Galaxy, just part of a finely tuned universe.
Flickr/NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler
Behind every place name is a story. A new book catalogues the adventures, mistakes and history behind Australia’s weirdest, from Bungle Bungle to Spanker Knob.
Robert Lepage explores his past, and the notion of memory, in his autobiographical show 887.
Supplied
We all store parts of our memory outside of our head: in our phones, our computers and our friends. In 887, Robert Lepage brings his memory to life in a gloriously intricate one-man production.
Gus Worland investigates the causes of male suicide: but should a celebrity tell experts how to suck eggs?
ABC
Suicide is the leading cause of death for men under 45. The ABC TV series Man Up explores whether a reluctance to express feelings is part of the problem - yet the show seems to teeter between celebrating male culture and asking it to change.
Paul Kelly, Camille O’Sullivan and Feargal Murray marry poetry and music in a compelling performance as part of the Melbourne Festival.
Sarah Walker
In a new collaboration, Paul Kelly has joined singer Camille O'Sullivan and pianist Feargal Murray to set 100 years of Irish poetry to music. As the emerald isle is sung into being, the words of Yeats and Joyce still stand out.
A ceramic vase repaired by Guy Keulemans using photoluminescent pigment.
Author provided
We tend to throw away broken things, but the Japanese art of kintsugi – repairing broken ceramics with gold and silver – can give us a different perspective on waste.
Maggie Naouri as Anu Singh, behind Jerome Meyer as Joe Cinque. Singh famously killed Cinque in 1997 by injecting him with a fatal dose of heroin.
Supplied
In 1997, Joe Cinque was killed by his girlfriend Anu Singh. A new film about his death is riveting Australian cinema, with a heightened sense of tension and implicit violence throughout.
Collisions director Lynette Wallworth used drones and 360 degree filming to create a totally immersive experience.
Supplied
What if your first contact with the Western world was witnessing an atomic test? This is the story of Nyarri Nyarri Morgan, told in stunning virtual reality in animation/documentary hybrid Collisions.
The South Korean sculpture biennale ranges from airy and lofty metal structures to strange and dark creations.
Changwon Sculpture Biennale casts a wide net, from a disconcerting jumble of plastic body parts to a break-dancing sculptor armed with an angle-grinder.
One of the best offerings from this year’s OzAsia festival was Vertigo 20.
Vertigo Dance Troupe/Gadi Dagon
In creativity, skill and daring, the productions on offer embodied an energy and imagination comparable to, and at times exceeding, anything prestigious European-focused international festivals might present.
Richard Ffarington painted idealised versions of Aboriginal people, as in King George Sound, 1840s.
State Art Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia
The first Europeans to arrive in Western Australia were baffled by the strange land they saw. A new exhibition explores the Arcadia artists tried to transpose over native plants and people.
Fifty years after the Maralinga atomic tests, an exhibition grapples with the pain and devastation left behind.
Karen Standke, Road to Maralinga II (detail). Supplied
The Maralinga atomic tests were devastating to life and land in Central Australia. Black Mist Burnt Country brings together dozens of artistic responses in a powerful, but somewhat incoherent memorial.
As soon as we defined physical boundaries in buildings, we created the burglar who breaches them.
Shutterstock
How an ancient Aboriginal memory technique may uncover the meaning behind archaeological sites across the globe are revealed in a new book, The Memory Code.
Rika Hamaguchi from the Bangarra Dance Theatre performs at the culmination of the barrangal dyara exhibition.
Photo Peter Greig/Kaldor Public Art Projects
Jonathan Jones uses Aboriginal shields to create a skeleton of Sydney’s Garden Palace, destroyed by fire in 1882. In song, dance and sculpture, he celebrates what has been lost and rediscovered.
Young actors give voice to what teenage boys think about porn – how often they watch it, who they watch it with and why.
Sol Rumbl, Ari Maza Long, Sam Salem and Jack Palit in Gonzo. Photo credit Sarah Walke.
Drawing on surveys and group discussions with teenage boys about their use of pornography, Gonzo provides a window into young men’s experiences that’s in equal parts funny, engaging, and confronting.
Ping-pong balls pour from the ceiling onto a dancer.
Supplied
A young Aboriginal woman falls in love with an escaped Japanese POW in 1944. Anita Heiss’ new book entwines romance with questions of enmity and friendship: who is fighting whom?
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne