Culture Buff

Wendy Bowman, 2019 by David Darcy Darling Portrait Prize 2020

4 July 2020 9:00 am

She is not a theoretical or idealogical environmentalist. Wendy Bowman became an activist when her crops were ruined by polluted…

Keith Urban using a Maton guitar, recording Gimme Shelter in Olympic Studios, London

27 June 2020 9:00 am

We are critical of ourselves for not designing or manufacturing things any more. Well, there is a contrary example in…

Laughing Child by John Brack

20 June 2020 9:00 am

In a futile attempt at participating in the current cultural revolution, I tried to suffer ‘harm and offence’ from an…

Richard Tognetti

13 June 2020 9:00 am

This week the Australia Chamber Orchestra should have been delighting audiences with their usual brilliant performances to celebrate the 30th…

Belgravia

6 June 2020 9:00 am

Belgravia is the rather coldly beautiful residential part of London bounded by Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Buckingham Palace. It is also…

Sydney Opera House during Vivid Sydney Festival

30 May 2020 9:00 am

To state the obvious, these are extremely testing times for the performing arts and live entertainment generally. Although galleries are…

Cover of May issue of Apollo

23 May 2020 9:00 am

We are all being digitised one way or another. Performing arts companies, not able to perform, are gamely putting themselves…

Dame Mary Gilmore working from home in 1952

16 May 2020 9:00 am

She lived in a flat in Kings Cross, was a lifelong socialist, a regularly observant Presbyterian, a Dame of the…

Queens of print

9 May 2020 9:00 am

The Spectator has been celebrating its 10,000th UK issue with justifiable pride; it is an astounding achievement. Australia has long…

Geraldine Brooks and Darleen Bungey

2 May 2020 9:00 am

Major award-winning biographies of Arthur Boyd and John Olsen have preceded the third book by Darleen Bungey. It is less…

The Elgin Marbles

25 April 2020 9:00 am

He grew up in Eastwood on Sydney’s Northern Line. Geoffrey Robertson’s brilliant career got off to a flying start with…

Geoffrey Blainey

18 April 2020 9:00 am

He coined the phrase ‘tyranny of distance’ which not only entered the language but encapsulated the view that many Australians…

Anne Glenconner

11 April 2020 9:00 am

It is said that Shakespeare wrote King Lear in quarantine from the plague. Some have been suggesting that this year’s…

Lloyd Rees Solitude 1978

4 April 2020 9:00 am

‘How much of our village do we burn to contain this?’. That was the chilling headline of an article in…

Christos Tsiolkas

28 March 2020 9:00 am

This was not the ideal beach book for the Christmas holidays but now we are in different times, it has…

Mozart’s Clarinet

21 March 2020 9:00 am

A couple of friends have nominated it as music they would like played at their funerals. I’m not into programming…

David Hallberg

14 March 2020 9:00 am

The artistic leadership of a major performing company is, by definition, important. The Australian Ballet has a forthcoming vacancy of…

David Williamson

7 March 2020 9:00 am

‘That sinkhole of ambition and superficiality we call Sydney.’ That’s a direct quotation from the Melbourne Theatre Company’s promotion of…

Trent Dalton

29 February 2020 9:00 am

He’s barely in his forties. He’s married with two nearly teenage daughters. He lives in Brisbane. He’s a staff journalist…

Bruce Beresford at home in Birchgrove 2018

22 February 2020 9:00 am

Sydney’s Archibald has the name and the fame, but there is a new kid on the block: the Darling Portrait…

No Pay? No Way!

15 February 2020 9:00 am

As a sort of protest, I am not going to the opening of No Pay? No Way! at the Sydney…

The Happy Prince

8 February 2020 9:00 am

Many people have had a go at it. Ever since Oscar Wilde published The Happy Prince and Other Tales in…

Luca Micheletti and Anna Dowsley

1 February 2020 9:00 am

A taciturn Glaswegian and an unlikely knight of the realm, David McVicar has directed several of Opera Australia’s most admired…

Marta Dusseldorp

25 January 2020 9:00 am

Known throughout his life as Dick, Gerardus Dusseldorp had just come to Australia and created Civil and Civic (later Lend…

Heritage Cai Guo-Qiang, China b.1957

18 January 2020 9:00 am

We talk about it a lot. One of life’s most essential elements it is now being celebrated in an exhibition:…