Australian Arts

A passable Antipodean

26 April 2025 9:00 am

Isn’t it strange the way the popular and high art aspects of our culture keep connecting and intersecting. A friend…

The way the imagination works

19 April 2025 9:00 am

Easter was almost on us when the suggestion came. There was talk of a new Narnia film underway and of…

The zenith of art

12 April 2025 9:00 am

Last week your columnist cut a paragraph stating that the original Melbourne Higgins in My Fair Lady, Robin Bailey, and…

Unsurpassable

5 April 2025 9:00 am

It’s a weird connection but they say Donald Trump is devoted to his presidential predecessor Andrew Jackson who was popular…

Intensely engaging

29 March 2025 9:00 am

The Australian National Academy of Music gala performance on Friday 21 March was dazzling with guest conductor Asher Fisch leading…

Theatre vultures will kill

22 March 2025 9:00 am

Having a sportswriter father is no excuse. The young man was tall, long fair-haired with a hat. ‘What do you…

Never mind the cracks

15 March 2025 9:00 am

If you wanted confirmation that the world can change dramatically you need only remember the Berlin Wall coming down in…

Devotion and betrayals

8 March 2025 9:00 am

There is a Roman saying, ‘What the barbarians started the Barberinis completed’ with reference to one of the great dynastic…

In every kind of film

1 March 2025 9:00 am

The fact that the eminent Irish actor Stephen Rea is doing Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape at the Adelaide Festival from…

Knowing how to cast

22 February 2025 9:00 am

Simone Young conducted Mahler’s Third at the Opera House on Wednesday 19 February and with its dense lyricism, its lush…

Newsreader fascinates

15 February 2025 9:00 am

It’s a fascinating thing that The Newsreader is back on ABC iview. This is the soap about a couple of…

Sweeping exit

8 February 2025 9:00 am

It will be fascinating to see what Jamie Martín, the head of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, makes of Mahler’s Second…

It ain’t me, Bob

1 February 2025 9:00 am

It’s always a bit extraordinary how much an art form lives on the legends it has created. Everyone is looking…

Nothing like a Dame

25 January 2025 9:00 am

Art takes every possible shape and size. The exhibition of Japanese ukiyo-e prints (running at the National Gallery of Australia…

Pacific Paradise Lost

18 January 2025 9:00 am

Back in the childhoods of the baby boomers everyone seemed to know that Shakespeare was born in 1564 because there…

Thrillers

11 January 2025 9:00 am

It’s funny the preconceptions you have about the Christmas/New Year period. I hadn’t anticipated seeing Juror #2 the new Clint…

Summer Reading

4 January 2025 9:00 am

There are a thousand ways of celebrating the Christmas holiday that are culture specific but have a universal appeal. You…

Take it easy on a long, hot summer

14 December 2024 9:00 am

It’s a strange time, the summer holidays in Australia. Some people have riveting memories of Boxing Day tests, of Australian…

The most immodest thing

7 December 2024 9:00 am

So they’re having another go at removing the varnish and the accumulated dark oiliness and other accretions from that most…

Drunk in a midnight choir

30 November 2024 9:00 am

Biography can create the most heightened sense of drama. Just at the moment SBS On Demand is showing a streamer…

Such grandeur in the mind

23 November 2024 9:00 am

There’s always something breathtaking about the prices great art can fetch but the sale of Leonardo’s ‘Salvator Mundi’ at Christie’s…

Striving of the individual soul

16 November 2024 9:00 am

The Australian Ballet seems to have had a smash hit with Oscar. Not only did the ballet, choreographed by Christopher…

Narrative robbery

9 November 2024 9:00 am

So the silly season, the festive season when we celebrate the incarnation of the Good is looming, yet again, and…

The all-powerful hand of the director

2 November 2024 9:00 am

When that writer of spare French prose André Gide was asked who the greatest French poet was he replied, ‘Hugo,…

Such wild and tumultuous art

26 October 2024 9:00 am

Jonathan Mills’ opera Eucalyptus based on the superbly designed novel by Murray Bail has left audiences dazzled and rushing to…