Since its opening in 2012, 107 Projects in Redfern has offered locals an eclectic mix of creative and community-focused events. This month, the artist-led space will host Symbioses, a contemporary concert series curated by Australian soprano Jane Sheldon. Sheldon is not what you might think of when you think 'opera singer'. Last we've seen the New York-based Australian soprano around Sydney, she's been singing fragments of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species at the Australian Museum or facing a wall mesmerically warbling Holocaust poetry for the Sydney Chamber Opera. She fuses her ARIA Award nominated voice with contemporary experimentation, all while working with such international institutions as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and the Boston Camerata. Taking opera out of its rarefied (and expensive) concert halls, the Symbioses series will showcase a carefully chosen selection of recently composed pieces, including some Australian and worldwide premieres, as well as works of the 20th-century avant-garde. Sheldon will perform throughout the series, while Megan Clune (clarinet) and James Wannan (viola) will accompany her for the opening at 107 Projects. This intimate evening promises a new take on contemporary chamber music and the chance to appreciate the acclaimed vocals of one of our leading classical singers.
It's not just a tour. It's a mega-tour, involving three singer-songwriters and 29 dates. In October, Mia Dyson, Liz Stringer and Jen Cloher will depart their Melbourne homes for what's shaping up to be one really long road trip. They've released an EP on Milk Records to mark the occasion, of which only 500 hard copies (all signed) are available. Between them, the trio count ARIA Awards, several short listings for the Australian Music Prize and eleven albums in their collection. Dyson is still witnessing the impact of the international release of her 2012 album, The Moment; Cloher recently launched her third LP, In Blood Memory; and Stringer's just returned from a European tour on the back of Warm In the Darkness. "This is a once in a lifetime experience for me — touring with the finest songwriter-musicians who are also my best mates!" Mia Dyson said. "I get to back them up while they sing and play their hearts out and they do the same for me. The road will not be tough and lonely on this tour."
You don’t have to venture all the way to the Hunter Valley to enjoy the many delights that the region has to offer. The eighth annual Hunter Valley Uncorked festival is coming to Balmoral Beach for a leisurely Sunday of wining, dining and hip swaying by the beach. The event will host award-winning wineries, restaurants and artisans showcasing the finest fruits of their labours. Guests can spend their time ambling through the many stalls and enjoy tastings and chats from winemakers from Allandale Wines, Bimbadgen, First Creek Wines, Ridgeview Wines, Thomas Wines and many more. Foodies will find epicurean heaven when sampling the artisanal cheeses, chocolates and olive oils. All of these treats and wines will be available for purchase, so you can stock up on those truffles that you wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else. When you’ve had your fill of wine (or not), relax and enjoy a gourmet picnic lunch plate, sip fresh lemonade and savour rich gelato while enjoying live music from The Mammers. If you and your mates are looking for something to reward yourselves with at the end of a long week, sunshine, sand and Semillon may be the perfect anecdote. The event lasts until 5pm, with free shuttles operating approximately every 15 minutes from Mosman and Spit Junction to Balmoral Beach.
It's a pretty simple idea. Make an artwork that is A4. Yep, that paper size that we all use pretty much every day. Usually feeding it unashamedly into a printer. Finally, A4 paper is getting its moment of glory. As part of a major fundraising endeavour, 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art made a callout across the globe to “artists, writers, designers, architects, animators, photographers and fashionistas and everyone in between”. Everyone was invited to submit a work, of any media, into the exhibition 4A A4. All the artworks will be sold at the fixed price of $200. The artist of each artwork will remain unknown to the buyer until after the sale. So you'll have something in common with the unsuspecting Banksy buyers of New York if you end up walking away with a hot artist's work for a steal. Plus, the money from each sale will go towards funding 4A's future exhibitions. Here's to both supporting a gallery that creates opportunities for artists and having a great, affordable new piece hanging in the lounge room. Image: David Lui, 4A's first Treasurer at the Fundraising Auction in 1997, courtesy of 4A.
Now in its eighth year, Show Me Shorts Film Festival 2013 offers a selection of the best shorts from New Zealand and around the world. After careful deliberation the hundreds of films submitted have been whittled down to just forty. These shorts are not only going to be critiqued by the public but are also judged by industry experts who select the winners of the nine different awards. What's really exciting about this year in particular is that Show Me Shorts has become Academy Award accredited, meaning whichever film wins Best Film will also be eligible for an Oscar nomination. The sessions are organised thematically and include groupings such as 'Dad's Decision', 'Laughing at Ourselves', 'My Generation', 'Our Place' and 'Through the Looking Glass'. The acting talent includes plenty of local names as well as top international talent such as Michael Richards (Sienfield's Kramer) in Walk the Light and the voice of Cate Blachett in the award-winning animation A Cautionary Tale. * Photo: Still from Aidee Walker's award-winning film Friday Tigers.
Carrie. You've read the book. You've watched the film. But you haven't seen the Broadway musical. Or at least Australia hasn't; Broadway's most infamous production Carrie the Musical is making its Australian premiere this November. Carrie the Musical will mark the final production in the 2013 Reginald Season of independent works. And what a show to go out on. The tale of outcast Carrie White, the musical is a freshly reimagined work, following the iconic original story but set against a stellar soundtrack. Its been reworked since its Broadway flop, though the musical's chequered history makes for an interesting lure itself. Produced by Squabbalogic and directed by the company's artistic director Jay James-Moody with music overseen by Mark Chamberlain, this Carrie the Musical boasts a standout cast aiming to do the kitschy revenge horror justice. With the Carrie film remake starring Chloe Grace Moretz and Julianne Moore to hit cinemas in November, this musical spin could not come at a better time.
Make a short film in 32 hours: ready, set, go. Sounds full on, doesn’t it? That’s the goal of Kino Kabaret, an intensive workshop for filmmakers and actors occurring in three separate weekend-long sessions. Open to all levels of expertise, Kino Sydney will provide all the professional equipment and technical mentorship needed to write, shoot and edit as many films as you (or your team) can make in one weekend. There are no limitations — if you decide you love it the first time, you can sign up for the other weekends as well. Each session wraps up with a closing screening party, complete with booze, food and live entertainment. Every completed film will be shown in front of a live audience, so it wouldn’t be a bad place to show your stuff and make some connections. If you’re a budding actor, director or just curious to test out a camera, Kino Kabaret is the perfect place for creatives to put their brains together and make something cool. The workshop takes place at The Kinolab at Metro Screen, Paddington Town Hall, Cnr Oatley Rd and Oxford St. The Sunday night screenings are held Night Parrot, Cnr William St & Yurong St, East Sydney.
Menace is Chris Yee’s much-anticipated debut exhibition, inviting you into his world of dystopian Americana, revelling in parallel universes, rap royalty and bitter rivalries. Amid menacing cobras, mythological beasts and fearless warriors, it's a dangerous but exciting place to be. Exploring techniques reminiscent of '90s comics, such as tapered lineweights and aesthetic flatness, Yee’s black-and-white drawings are crammed with detail and hypnotic textures. His art abounds in urban absurdities, from Brooklyn grit to Chinatown sass. With continual references to the New York Yankees and the New York Police Department, the city seems to be Yee's spiritual homeland. He also experiments with the Yankees logo, with a double slash through the ‘Y’, evoking the appearance of a Chinese character. As well as being a nod towards the mass of overlapping subcultures that characterises this dense, bustling metropolis, the manipulated logo functions as Yee’s artistic brand. Much of his work revolves around American antiheroes fused together with manga content and visual stylings. There's also a strong narrative quality that characterises Yee’s anarchist aesthetic. For example, the humorous internal politics of Charlie's Angels, with three thought bubbles simultaneously uttering the word 'bitch'. There’s also the team of street-savvy teens sitting on the scaly back of a snarling crocodile, chewing on a confederate flag. Another favourite is the delightfully convoluted work, part of the 'Menace collection', depicting a raging brawl atop the debris of the Statue of Liberty. The NYPD riot squad battles an eclectic mix of impromptu assassins and opportunist rebels, quipped with even more eclectic weapons, such as spears and molotov cocktails. It is sprawling and chaotic, hard-edged and dystopic; a work that reveals more and more the longer you devote to it. As well as Yee’s Yankee logo, the American and Confederate flags figure prominently throughout his work, billowing from rooftops and strapped to the back of motorcycles. His more textual works blaze with phrases, such as 'New York, New York Is Burning', a punk-ish corruption of the Broadway catch phrase. These bold slogans are accompanied by edgy illustrations, such as salivating mongrels and leering gangsters. They could easily be the prototype for a motorcycle gang's coat of arms, a hair away from being stitched onto the back of a leather jacket. There's something raw and viscerally enthralling about Yee's black ink calligraphy and comic-esque epics. His meticulous anarcho-punk brand of art is stylistically accomplished and conceptually engaging.
It's fifteen years since Elefant Traks started putting their weight behind independent Australian hip hop. In that time, the label has released scores of albums, organised a smorgasbord of gigs and taken home the Best Independent Label at the Independent Music Awards 2012. In October, Jimblah put out his first Elefant Traks album, Phoenix, to critical acclaim; Hermitude played New York City's CMJ Music Marathon; and both Urthboy and Horrorshow were nominated for ARIAs. To celebrate their 15th birthday, Elefant Traks will be hosting two massive, two-night parties in Sydney and Melbourne this month, featuring a selection of their favourite artists, including Horrorshow, Hermitude, The Herd, Jimblah and Sietta. In both cities, the second evening will be held in limited capacity venues (Melbourne's Northcote Social Club on 23 November and Sydney's Red Rattler on 30 November), so two-night tickets have already sold out. However, they're still on sale for the Corner Hotel (22 November) and the Metro (29 November).
Contrary to popular conception, art and science are buddies. At the forefront of this friendship is Insight Radical, an Australian initiative exploring the fertile intersection between these disciplines in exciting and inspiring ways. This unique collective of artists and scientists will be exhibiting works at the McLemoi Gallery from November 27 until December 9. The aim of Insight Radical: Where Science Meets Art is to capture a creative journey into free radical chemistry. If you’re unfamiliar with this particular branch of science, free radicals are molecules with unpaired electrons that are very reactive and damaging in their quest to find another electron. Whilst that’s flowing through your mind pipes, you might wonder what this has to do with art. Think luminous light media, sound-activated paintings, and sci-fi landscapes. To give a glimpse into these intriguing hybrid practices, Natalie O’Connor will be engaging with the way chemical processes both form and deteriorate paint. She states, “as artists, we have to predict how paint will perform for future generations.” Tony Lloyd, on the other hand, is taking the chain reaction and projecting it into landscape painting, offering the idea that paintings based on science are a form of science-fiction.
Everyone loves a good ol' fashioned housewarming. And after two wildly successful Melbourne events in 2011 and 2012, The Design Files has again opened its ridiculously well-designed doors to the general public — this time in Sydney. To be held in a beautiful residential property, The Design Files Open House will be an interactive and engaging retail experience — a stylised Australian home where everything is for sale. On offer is a massive range of linen, artwork, books, lighting, furniture and kitchenware. Just see it in the home environment, then buy it for your own. The pop-up event will be active for four days only in Sydney's Surry Hills. The initiative — led by The Design Files Blog creator, Lucy Feagins — is a unique concept, which encapsulates the imagination and style of thousands of design enthusiasts, supported by the immense readership of the popular website. The Design Files Open House will be open from 10am to 5pm daily.
There’s a film festival for everything these days, so it seems, but few offer cinematic treats of the truly weird, wonderful and WTF variety. That’s where the Sydney Underground Film Festival comes in, serving up a feast of film delicacies unlikely to be seen elsewhere — and not just likely but actively striving to make jaws drop in astonishment. Now in its seventh year, and forging ahead thanks to a successful crowdfunding campaign earlier in 2014, SUFF boasts an enticing mix of boundary-pushing genre fare, provocative documentaries, experimental efforts and just general freaked-out film fun. From September 4–7, the festival takes over The Factory Theatre, Marrickville for four days of movie madness and once again adventurous audiences are spoiled for choice. Check out our list of the five best things to see at the Sydney Underground Film Festival.
Expect to see the human body pushed to its absolute limits, choreography that seems almost miraculous and a potent blending of music, poetry, costuming and design. In this exclusive Sydney season, Louder Than Words is bringing two of the most awe-inspiring dance works (ever!) to the Sydney Dance Company stage. And they're both world premieres. From SDC artistic director, Rafael Bonachela, there's Scattered Rhymes, which is a collaboration with Australian composer Nick Wales and Grammy-nominated British composer Tarik O'Regan. It's an exploration of love in all its incarnations — from the unrequited to the sensual to the divine. Then, from Greek choreographer Andonis Foniadakis, there's Parenthesis, which features an original score written by French composer Julien Tarride and costumes created by fashion designer-photographer Tassos Sofroniou. It's an intense, athletic journey into the duality contained within an intimate relationship. With only 11 shows in the season, you'll want to lock down your tickets early; this is one impressive double-bill. Image: Justin Ridler.
Sometimes you've just got to be in the right place, at the right time. Singer/songwriter Timothy Carroll first struck up a musical friendship with guitarist and composer Oscar Dawson in South East Asia and again, a few years later, in Stockholm where a stint of recording culminated in a demo for what would be a future Holy Holy song. Since then, the inter-city-loving duo have returned to Australia and, working with Hungry Kids of Hungary drummer Ryan Strathie, have produced insanely infectious singles like 'Impossible Like You' and 'House of Cards'. Support performances for Emma Louise and The Trouble With Templeton last year have impressed Australian audiences while their debut album, The Pacific EP, released earlier this year and recorded with local superstar producer Matt Redlich, has attracted Midlake comparisons. Now with a third single, 'History', up their sleeves, Holy Holy are embarking on a national headline tour. Expect gripping chorus builds and impassioned vocals as the band transports their rich production sounds from the studio onto the stage. https://youtube.com/watch?v=oLu-DNXrs04
Self-proclaimed 'Southern American music preservationist' Justin Townes Earle is returning to our shores for Melbourne's Out On The Weekend Americana-lovin' festival. Luckily, he's also trekking across the country for a number of sideshows, set to play new tunes such as 'Time Shows Fools' from his fifth studio album Single Mothers. The album reflects a new direction for the recently married Earle, the first of two releases from a recent recording session. The second, Absent Fathers, will be released next year. Old and new fans alike can expect a new Earle experience at the show, with JTE playing with a full live band for the very first time. These shows will promise a different approach for the blues aficionado, one that finds him fitting in with his fellow jammers instead of dominating the stage solo. A true talent — and one who's truly stepped out of his famous father's shadow — Earle is a musician whose live shows guarantee a good ol' night on the town(es). https://youtube.com/watch?v=VWoJYmDg0WQ
Guardian Australia art critic Andrew Frost picked out two highlights from last year's International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA). One was Ryoji Ikeda's Test Pattern, a rolling strobe light of sound and thunder that invited the public into a vertiginous bay of the Carriageworks. The other was Alex Davies' the Very Near Future, an experiential installation that notionally takes you onto a trip 30 seconds into the future. This month, Sydney Festival restages the Very Near Future out of conference, in the much more public surrounds of Woolloomooloo's Artspace. Davies says one of his ambitions with the installation was “trying to represent time travel”. That is, let you feel like you're peering through a cut in time and space. He crafts his illusion by sending you trailing around a large-scale film set. As you explore, the film crew try to produce a little film noir, but accidentally explore a repeating multiverse of events, Groundhog Day-style. It's no trillion-year hop into the future, but rather an appealing chance to find out if this small-scale future will play out as planned. Image: Alex Davies, The Very Near Future, 2013, installation view, Carriageworks, courtesy of the artist.
Typically the thought of contemporary outdoor sculpture conjures up images of sleek, ambiguous metal objects. However, Hidden at Rookwood's historic cemetery features a diverse and exciting range of media from innovative local artists. Established in 2009, the exhibition is one of the foremost initiatives in supporting emerging and established artists from Western Sydney and regional areas. This dramatic site is fertile soil for exploring themes such as death, love, loss and memory. Wander through the tranquil grounds amid craggy headstones and absorb the creative ways in which the artists grapple with these ideas. Highlights from last year include David McGuiness’s Ancient Gods, termed ‘the teletubby totem pole’, and Jane Theau’s homage to eccentric Sydneysider Bea Miles. Also popular was Thomas C. Chung’s poignant I Just Wanted To Say…I Still Remember You, featuring kitschy knitted flowers sprouting out of the ground. Kicking off the exhibition will be a launch party on 21 September at Reflections at Rookwood cafe, featuring wine, canapes, glistening ice sculptures and live music from folk-pop duo The Sweet Little Army. This public art exhibition is a gem in Sydney’s cultural landscape, the perfect way to spend a sunny springtime afternoon.
What has eight wheels, big hair and some pretty smooth moves? A Glam Rock Roller Disco, of course. A fusion of rock 'n' roll, roller skates and really high hairstyles, this turbo-charged skate bash is guaranteed good times on the rollerfloor. Whether you want to relive fond childhood memories or perhaps fancy yourself a second coming of Olivia Newton-John circa 'Xanadu', this is your time, as The Roundhouse plays host to Sydney’s first Glam Rock Roller Disco. Tunes will be set by the likes of Alejandro II, DJ Andrew P Street and MR DOBALINA and dressing up is encouraged, with prizes awarded for the most impressive get-up. Feel like you might not have what it takes? You don’t have to miss out. Those of us with bad knees and coordination issues can spend the night rocking it out on the dance floor, drink in hand. With so few roller-skating venues left in Sydney, this is the perfect opportunity to strap on a pair of eight-wheelers. BYO Air Guitar.
This Is Not Art is Newcastle's premier independent arts and media festival, where the emphasis is on collaboration and experimentation. It is a testing ground for new ideas, an opportunity to mingle with industry professionals and fellow artists in order to re-invigorate your artistic passion and develop new skills. An umbrella sheltering a number of festivals, this year TINA is home to the Crack Theatre Festival, National Young Writers' Festival, Critical Animals and Electrofringe. Between them, the festivals boast workshops, performances, round table discussions, interactive events and a sleepover. A forum for showcasing, networking and inventing, TINA is a festival targeted at launching a generation of aspiring artists and fostering the creativity of local communities. Capping off a weekend of bold and dynamic events, don't miss the epic closing party hosted by Electrofringe and featuring a swag of emerging electro artists from Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle spinning danceable tunes and experimental beats.
Celebrations are in order for ALASKA Projects. The Sydney-based, artist-run initiative dedicated to exhibiting contemporary art in unused spaces is celebrating its second birthday. To make the occasion extra festive, they've teamed up with World's Only, a biannual, limited-edition magazine celebrating the launch of its third issue. The magazine, founded by classical musician Megan Clune, is concerned with that interesting interstice between art and music. To mark the occasion, the crew will stage MUSICAL ALASKA #12. The event will see the ALASKA Orchestra and Golden Blonde perform American minimalist composer Philip Glass' masterwork Music in Fifths. You are cordially invited to join them for a birthday whiskey and, fittingly, a Bombe Alaska donated by the folks at Gelato Messina, from 5pm onwards.
Potager is a kitchen garden on a 10-acre farm located at Carool in the Tweed Valley that celebrates fresh, locally sourced ingredients. You'll often find the kitchen staff picking lettuce, herbs and veggies from the garden while eager patrons take their seats in the cosy dining room. Potager's long lunches and degustation dinners are only held every few months which makes them very sought after — so much so they're usually fully booked within 48 hours. As part of the North Coast Festival of Flavour, Potager will be welcoming guests for another one of its renowned 'Meet the Locals' lunches. Local producers alongside Potager's gardener and head chef will welcome you with refreshing cocktails and delicious canapes in the garden followed a three-course lunch.
If you lived in Sydney throughout your 20s, you've no doubt been to Ivy at least once. Located in Merivale's massive George Street precinct, the bar is renowned for its nightlife, hosting everything from deep house DJs to drag queen performances. Basically, this multi-level bar knows how to throw one helluva party. If you'd prefer to soak in the sun over getting down on a dimly lit dance floor, you'll want to head up to Ivy Pool Club. The space is inspired by Italian Riveria, making it the perfect spot to kick back in summer. Here, you can lounge poolside, splash some serious cash and indulge in a whole bunch of Italian-themed festivities. Appears in: The Best Rooftop Bars in Sydney
Vibey Potts Point izakaya Cho Cho San has brought back its annual Ramen Month for 2025. The kitchen will be serving steaming bowls of yuzu shio ramen every Monday–Thursday evening and Friday lunch until Friday, June 27, making it a perfect option for those looking for a weeknight warmer. This year's hero ramen is a bright, umami-laden, Tokyo-style chicken and bonito broth elevated with yuzu tare and finished with saffron ajitsuke tamago, green mizuna and negi. Toppings-wise, you can choose between king prawn and clam (which will set you back an extra $10), butter-poached chicken or hearty fried mushroom. [caption id="attachment_640610" align="alignnone" width="1920"] Nikki To[/caption] You can grab a solo bowl for $25, but if you're keen to linger a little longer, you can level up with The Cho Ramen Set for $45. This option adds a drink on arrival (your pick of yuzu soda, sake or Sapporo beer), three pieces of tuna sashimi and a pork katsu bun. Limited portions of ramen are available each day, so you'll need to make a booking to guarantee yourself a spot. It's also long been one of Sydney's more popular winter dining deals, so if you like your comfort food with a bit of edge, this is one not to miss.
The combination of Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos is one of 21st-century cinema's best, and long may it continue beyond The Favourite, Poor Things and now Kinds of Kindness. The mix of the two-time Oscar-winner, the Greek filmmaker, plus Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley in the last two of those movies has also been working out swimmingly. There's another winning blend in Kinds of Kindness, though, and one deserving of earning the third Lanthimos lead in as many features an Oscar: the writer/director and Jesse Plemons, who has already collected the 2024 Cannes Best Actor award for his trio of roles in this black-comedy triptych. He gives not one, not two, but three exceptional performances. First he plays an employee who loses his boss' faith, then a husband whose wife is lost, then a disciple trying to find a woman with an extraordinary ability. Sweet dreams are made of this, as the Eurythmics' thumping 1983 hit tells Kinds of Kindness' viewers when it blasts through the movie at full blare from the get-go. There's little that's delectable for the film's characters, or kind for that matter, but Lanthimos back at his darkest, spikiest, and most sinister and cynical — back among the vibes of Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer — is indeed a delicious reverie. As Annie Lennox sings about anthemically, this is a picture about desire. It's equally about everyone looking for something that fulfils those yearnings and stirrings. Using and abusing, wanting to be used and abused, holding and keeping your head up in this cycle of pleasure and pain: so also goes the words of one of the best dance-floor fillers of the past four decades, and now so goes the feature that makes its sentiments a filmic reality as well. Plemons (Civil War), Stone (Cruella), Qualley (Drive-Away Dolls), Dafoe (Asteroid City), Hong Chau (The Menu), Joe Alwyn (Stars at Noon), Mamoudou Athie (The Burial): they're Lanthimos' troupe in the three tales of his ninth movie. Joining them is Poor Things' Yorgos Stefanakos as RMF, who is driving the car pumping out "who am I to disagree?" and "I travel the world and the seven seas" when the anthology's opening chapter commences. The repertory cast is stunning, on paper and on the screen. So is the filmmaker's knowing playfulness in enlisting them, with some of the most-famous faces who routinely represent humanity — that's acting, after all — toying with being humane's utter absence. Sometimes they're demanding that each other commits murder. Sometimes they're getting cannibalistic. Sometimes they're lopping off their own body parts. Often they're fixated to the point of delusion. La Chimera is already taken as the name of an excellent and unique auteur-helmed 2024 cinema release in Australia, skewing figurative, but the three-headed creature of Greek myth that originated a term for illusions feels like the spirit animal for Kinds of Kindness in more ways than one. Among actual critters, dogs and cats feature here, more reminders of domesticity taken down startling paths. Neither are crucial to the debut chapter, but that's still the narrative's route, as Plemons' Robert, a salaryman with a spacious home, doting wife (Chau) and slick business job, has the facade of his comfortable existence shattered. His employer and sometimes-lover Raymond (Dafoe) dictates his every move, plotting out instructions on daily handwritten cards. Wardrobe choices, what to eat, who he married, when to have sex: everything is covered. After ten years of willing and eager compliance, Robert then refuses a task, then suspects that optician's assistant Rita (Stone) also has the same control-and-subjugation arrangement. Making Plemons and Stone competitors will pop up again, but next they're husband and wife in the movie's second instalment. He's police officer Daniel, she's marine researcher Liz, and he's distraught about her going missing at sea until she's rescued against everyone else's expectations. Is the woman now sharing his home really his spouse, though? And what lengths will he push her to to test his fears? In the last of Kinds of Kindness' trilogy of tales, Dafoe's Omi and Chau's Aka steer a cult that's looking for a healer who fits an exacting list of criteria. Doing the searching on their behalf, and being rewarded with sex, plus drinking water purified with their gurus' tears, are Plemons' Andrew and Stone's Emily. In this section as in each before it — and across Lanthimos' entire filmography — how brutal, domineering, selfish and cruel people can be is firmly in focus, as are the beliefs that we cling to to pretend that's not the case. These notions were all a part of The Favourite and Poor Things, of course, as scripted by The Great's Tony McNamara, yet the mood gets stormier when Lanthimos works with his Dogtooth, Alps, The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer screenwriter Efthimis Filippou. Gone are the whimsy and empowerment that also colours Poor Things, for instance. Still, his work with Filippou remains grounded in heightening everyday traits and patterns, however dystopian or nightmarish they get. Watching this duo's collaborations always means recognising the impulses that spring from the mix of water and flesh that comprise humans, as well as witnessing those relatable urges and compulsions being gleefully and cannily taken to extremes. Adding to a resume that continues the opposite trajectory to people en masse in Lanthimos and Filippou's view — that'd be getting better and better — Plemons is impossible to peer away from as Robert, Daniel and Andrew alike. Each is an everyman plagued by a need for purpose and belonging, and quickly willing to get vicious to grasp it. But amid the meticulous imagery that always characterises a Lanthimos film, with cinematographer Robbie Ryan (The Old Oak) a master in emphasising new views and angles on what'd be typical sights in other hands, Plemons isn't playing the same character over and over again. As his hair gets shorter chapter by chapter, the Killers of the Flower Moon, Love & Death and The Power of the Dog actor does far more than make his lost, lonely, searching, awkward and angry Kinds of Kindness figures thematic clones or even siblings. That said, there's a three-sides-of-the-same-coin statement to the picture overall: people are unkind, then people are unkind, then people are unkind once more. The specifics of their personalities and circumstances change. What they're desiring shifts as well. Kinds of unkindness remains the end fresult. As Hunter Schafer (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes) rounds out the ensemble, just in one segment, Stone has the same gig as Plemons, and is equally committed. She's in terrain, aka unpacking the savagery that flows through humans like blood, that she's also tapped into in her recent small-screen appearances in The Curse and Fantasmas, 2023's best new TV show and 2024's best in the same field so far. She's on message for Lanthimos, then, even when he's not her director. With him, Stone summed up the Greek Weird Wave great's prevailing perspective on life best when she was earning her second Best Actress Oscar for Poor Things as Bella Baxter: "I have adventured it and found nothing but sugar and violence".
The roundest object in the world is Debra Phillips' second solo exhibition at BREENSPACE. Showcasing two photographic bodies of work, Phillips takes as her starting point the Avogadro Project, an attempt to create a new standard measure for the kilogram. At present, the kilogram is the only standard international unit of measure that is still defined by a physical object, and a fragile one at that. Locked in a vault in France, 'Le Grand K' is a cylinder of platinum and iridium, an object which has only been handled three times in the past century and yet it is still 'losing weight'. The CSIRO Precision Optics team in Sydney together with the National Measurement Institute have been seeking to produce a replacement for the world’s lone kilogram (or, now, slightly less), one which can be created from a single substance and can be replicated. Importantly, this object is also perfectly spherical — the roundest object in the world. It is interesting that Phillips has chosen photography to explore the idea of replicated perfection. Phillips’ first series, 13 photographs shot in the studio with photographic standard measure backgrounds of either red, blue, green or grey (referencing RGB and the grey card) display the tools and output of the man-made Avogadro Project. The second series, shot on a large format analogue camera, displays termite mounds located on the NSW South Coast. Each mound home is individual and self-contained, a climate controlled perfect world naturally occurring. Comprising of 26 photographs printed using an outdated process these images are slightly unstable, each displays minor tone differences, some more sepia, gold or red than others, although ultimately each is incredibly rich and detailed. At the point between analogue and digital, the one-off and the replicable Phillips presents a collision. The man standing between the two is the world master lens-maker, Achim Leistner. Working by hand to ‘massage the atoms’ of the new spherical kilogram he polishes the globe so as to create the closest approximation of perfection. They haven’t succeeded yet, but imagine his hands.
Harvest Festival returns to leafy Parramatta Park on 17 November and is bringing a lineup sure to make even the most nonchalant of festivalgoers suffer a pang of time clash panic. This years Harvest ticketholders will be treated to one of the more eclectic lineups on the festival calendar, with a myriad of exciting national and international acts gracing five musical stages, while a “Campfire” stage (think Erotic Fan Fiction and a Comedy Picnic) keeps things sufficiently eccentric. Euphonic wizards Beck, Sigur Ros and Beirut will head up a mass bliss-out session on The Great Lawn with the assistance of The Dandy Warhols, Los Campesinos! and Winter People. The Windmill Stage will welcome Santigold, Grizzly Bear, Ben Folds Five and Dexy’s, while Crazy P, Fuck Buttons and Chromatics will be sending out groovy astral vibes from The Big Red Tractor. An amped up arts explosion adds to the excitement this year, and did we mention that sightings of fist pumping and/or general trashiness are notably less frequent than at other major music festivals? Get your tickets here.
Brooklyn's El-P is one of the most prolific voices in hip-hop in both senses of the word. He's contributed productions and guest rhymes to albums by everyone from Dizzee Rascal and Das Racist to Beck and Cat Power, and as a rapper he eschews the commercial to the extent that you hesitate to even call him a rapper. Many of his tracks are marked not by blatant lyrics but by future-dystopian Philip K. Dick post-9/11 themes. He's also a white guy of Irish-Cajun-Lithuanian descent, and doesn't try to pretend he's anything else. El-P's latest release is the labyrinthine Cancer 4 Cure. "The Full Retard" (a reference to Tropic Thunder) is one of the album's catchier songs, but you can't call it simple. Other tracks you can't describe as anything other than a convoluted mix of militant vocals, Gameboy-era lo-fi aesthetics and heavily distorted beats. Things that are smart aren't usually easy to unravel. Nevertheless, El-P inspires motion. You might not be rhythmically gyrating but you certainly won't be sitting still if you're luckily enough to be in his audience this festival season. https://youtube.com/watch?v=OZptOs8Gu9k
Hey Geronimo, the Frankenstein creation of Brisbane’s indie scene, is a mish-mash of assorted talents that have come together for the love of the catchy tune. The five-piece are assertively carving a name for themselves as an all-pop delight, one that demands to be sung along to in full voice. They will be taking their Special Best Tour to The Zoo for what is sure to be a wholly fun show that’s not to be missed. Along for the ride are special guests The Griswolds, who are equally as infectious with their dance-demanding beachy tunes. Together these bands will deliver a party packed with the unabashed enthusiasm their live shows are known for.
Alabama Shakes have been hailed as one of the most exciting bands in the world right now. They've earned glowing reviews from The Telegraph, Pitchfork and the New York Times, and not just because they're impossible to hate (fact). Tingle-worthily humble origins are one reason you can't help but fall in love with these guys, another is postwoman-turned-frontwoman Brittany Howard. Howard has ceased delivering mail and is now charged with the responsibility of delivering rapturously powerful vocals, which she does with a soul-heavy wail that has been compared to Howlin' Wolf and Janis Joplin. Backed by stomping swamp rock and woefully twanging guitar strings courtesy of her classmates-turned-band members, it'll move you in more ways than one. With their acclaimed debut Boys & Girls still running on high rotation, Alabama Shakes are heading to Australia for the first time in January for Big Day Out. They'll play one sideshow at The Metro. https://youtube.com/watch?v=Le-3MIBxQTw
With Hidden making a return engagement to Rookwood Cemetery, Newtown’s own St Stephens Church is also getting its turn with Sydney’s artistic community, setting up some art among its tombstones for one evening in September. Nighttime: Twilight is a group show of strange art in the beautiful surrounds of Camperdown Cemetery. A pretty stunning place at the worst of times, the churchyard’s graves are home to the alleged Miss Haversham, the victims of the Dunbar wreck and its awesome fig was a returning location for ABC TV series My Place. For Nighttime, artists like the computer-loving Zoe Meagher, Coloured Diggers author Katherine Beckett and phenomenologist Jodie McNeilly are all trying their hands at beautifying this already pretty picturesque burial ground. And, for a single night, they're letting you come have a look. Cemetery, art, performance, history, community: there doesn’t seem to be much missing from this brief interruption to eternal rest. Except you. Nighttime: Twilight is presented by Performance Space as part of the Halls for Hire series, which is taking place from August 28 to October 7. Artists have been invited to create site-specific works which are inspired by and staged in community spaces around Sydney. Also check out Brown Council's durational baking project, Mass Action: 137 Cakes in 90 Hours; the appropriately post-Olympian Opening and Closing Ceremony; the ghostly investigation of Petersham Bowling Club's Phantasma #3; the September equinox celebration Spring Cursive; and the proletarian live sewing event The Making of the Flag: Give Us Back Our Unions (held on the 'World Day for Decent Work' at the Sydney Trades Hall).
Locals may know the Petersham Bowling Club is no ordinary bowlo, but they didn't know it was this extraordinary. According to the folks behind Phantasm #3, unexplained "electronic media aberrations" have been reported from deep in its basement for many years. Now a pair of inquisitive investigators, led by new media artist Alex Davies, are conducting experiments to try to unearth the truth beneath these phenomena. Assist the dedicated researchers in their quest to solve this mystery and ensure that their endeavours are not in vain by taking part in the enquiry. Phantasm #3 is presented by Performance Space as part of the Halls for Hire series, which is taking place from August 28 to October 7. Artists have been invited to create site-specific works which are inspired by and staged in community spaces around Sydney. Also check out Brown Council's durational baking project, Mass Action: 137 Cakes in 90 Hours; the one-evening-only awakening of Newtown's St Stephen's Cemetery, Nighttime: Twilight; the appropriately post-Olympian Opening and Closing Ceremony; the September equinox celebration Spring Cursive; and the proletarian live sewing event The Making of the Flag: Give Us Back Our Unions (held on the 'World Day for Decent Work' at the Sydney Trades Hall). Phantasm #3 is open 12-6, Wednesday to Sunday.
Saturday, September 29, sees the closure of William Street to cars and the spilling of fun and frivolity onto the tar for the annual William Street Laneway Festival. All of the shops along this strip have events, special prices, drinks, food and deals galore to lure you away from the mega-complexes and back to the simple joy of wandering and shopping in Paddington's home of unique boutiques. The prohibition on vehicles won't apply to food trucks, of course, of which Eat Art and Veggie Patch will be present. The day is a great opportunity to show your support to boutique shopping districts outside the all-powerful Westfields, all while enjoying some sun.
This American Life no longer requires any introduction. You and your youngish, globalised, culture-hungry friends are probably all over this podcasted hour of digestible journalism and storytelling. What's slightly less well known is the producers' experiments in translating the show's trademark style to visual media, including through a Showtime TV show and stage show The Invisible Made Visible. They're playful, inventive forays for our cross-platform age. Now comes phase (approx.) four: the movie. Co-written and produced by Ira Glass, Sleepwalk with Me is the feature-length adaptation of Mike Birbiglia's very memorable extreme-sleepwalking/relationship-breakdown stand-up routine, which was included in the TAL episode 'Fear of Sleep'. He has to preface this story with an assurance that it's true, because as he goes from fighting an imaginary jackal to falling off a shelving unit he's climbed in the belief it's a winner's podium to waking up bloodied on a hotel lawn, it increasingly doesn't sound like the cute, ha-ha version of sleepwalking we know. As Mike (or 'Matt Pandamiglio' as he's known in the movie) tells it, his sleepwalking gets worse as his girlfriend of eight years, Abby (Lauren Ambrose), starts to hint at marriage, babies and other grown-up things he's not ready for. He starts using the relationship concerns he can't vocalise to her in his stand-up, getting laughs for the first time. If you've heard the comedy routine that underlies Sleepwalk with Me on TAL, you'll know its engrossing, winningly self-deprecating and very funny. But it's as if the creative team felt that to make it worthy of a feature film they had to emphasise the relationship element, and that's just not the story's strong point. The idea of the man-boy who can't commit is rather '90s, and neither the narrative nor style brings it forward two decades, to where it should be. Sleepwalk with Me is still funny, but nothing in its bones suggests the creativity, forward-thinking or immediacy that This American Life has cultivated as its brand. And that dulls the experience of watching it. Birbiglia certainly makes some adorable, true-ringing observations about life and love. Just be prepared that the laughter-to-irritation ratio may not be one you find favourable. https://youtube.com/watch?v=u9tRN7bok4o
Finders keepers, losers weepers ... it’s a childhood taunt that still has the power to make me plunge towards the asphalt like a deranged Olympian diver in the hope of finding something shiny. The Finders Keepers Market held biannually at CarriageWorks is probably less likely to end in tears and an almighty knee scrape — but you will come out the other end with some sweet, shiny things. If that hasn't got you on the edge of your springboard, there’s plenty more on offer — around 60 stalls in fact — along with a bar, cafe and live music. The markets stay are open Saturday 6-10 and 10-5 on Sunday. Just remember, snooze you lose.
All The Way Through Evening is for lovers of classical music. It’s a movie for grown-ups, and between all the comic book adaptations, reality television franchises, Katy Perry “documentaries” and other laughable exercises in offensive mediocrity, it sometimes feels that they’re aren’t too many grown-up movies around. Australian filmmaker Rohan Spong’s musical documentary follows Mimi Stern-Wolfe who, since 1990, has organised concerts presenting the work of dozens of composers affected by HIV/AIDS. Her motivation is simple. “I do these concerts for years and years because I knew the people that we lost and I cared for them and I wanted to preserve the memory of their lives and their music and of their efforts and their talents.” In particular, All The Way Through Evening focuses on the work of Chris DeBlasio who died in 1993 at age 34. He was a composer “aware of the simplicity of beauty and captured it in his music”. He was also one of the first AIDS sufferers, and as his health unravelled his music grew heavier with grief. All The Way Through Evening won the Special Jury Award at the New York Downtown Film Festival last year. Even at seventy minutes, the film requires patience - it contains lengthy musical sequences and unfolds at its own meandering pace. Perhaps most interestingly, it provides a very personal snapshot of New York’s gay community in the late 1980s, described as “high art, low sex” and populated by men who would go the opera and theatre and then to public toilets and parks to pick up other men. The film also gives a sense of the early horrors of the AIDS epidemic: one poet who’s interviewed says, “I made a list of friends who died of AIDS, and I stopped at thirty-five. I know people who made lists and stopped at seventy-five, seventy-five men who died of AIDS.” All The Way Through Evening has been crafted with a great deal of affection for its subjects. It’s honest and compassionate and yet never falls over the brink into sentimentality. Spong takes an intimate, slow-burn approach to storytelling, and the photography is particularly lovely. The film is in very limited release, so grab it at the theatres while you can.
Founded in 1989, Sydney-based group Stalker have a long history of innovative, challenging physical theatre work. The latest show from this Carriageworks resident company promises immersive digital environments that react to the performers' movements. We're talking light projections on bodies in motion. If that all seems a little hard to wrap your head around, feast your ocular units on this clip, but keep in mind that was from when the show was workshopped — over a year ago! Which means it will be way more dazzling and highly developed when Encoded premieres November 28.
Last year the books went burlesque with saucy story-telling and thought-provoking debates. Onlookers were aghast: they're doing what? At the library? Now the Late Night Library series serves up the same dose of adults-only content but with a dash of Monty Python humour. Debuting at Newtown Library, Never Not Funny at Late Night Library promises to split your sides with the best and brightest acts of alternative and emerging comedy. Expect to giggle loudly, clap your hands, indulge in some vino, and not be told to hush — it's your local library but not as you know it. In November and December 2012, expect to see musical comedy duo Smart Casual re-creating their childhood on stage and Cameron James' Variety Nite Live.
There are a lot of similarities between Wild Nothing and fellow chillwave pioneers Toro Y Moi and Washed Out. All three are bedroom recordings by one-man bands, and all three men are from the southern U.S. Freaky! All make dreamy, lo-fi music with breathy vocals and steady beats that you can a) dance to at an underground disco, or b) listen to alone in your room while you stare at your posters of '80s indie bands. In the case of Wild Nothing's Virginia-born Jack Tatum, the posters he's staring at belong to The Cure, The Smiths and Simple Minds. Tatum puts a sunny disposition on their '80s gloom pop with chiming guitars and soothing vocals. You can chillax to his latest LP Nocturne in your room alone, or join some other shoegazers for a little boogie at Oxford Art Factory when Wild Nothing visits Australia for the first time in March. I hope he plays Chinatown. https://youtube.com/watch?v=zm636VSQXUU
Envision the music of Bach in dance form and what you get is probably not a 9-headed b-boy crew pulling off head spins and power moves. But that’s what Artistic Director Christoph Hagel and choreographer/mastermind Vartan Bassil have done with Red Bull Flying Bach: An explosive streetdance driven by the music of the visionary 18th century composer. The dancers are Berlin-based breakdance crew Flying Steps, formed by Bassil and Kadir “Amigo” Memis almost 10 years ago. While their moves are normally driven by urban sounds, this time head spins are inspired by piano keys and b-boy freezes by Bach’s fuges. Though that might be putting it too simply: What they’re really doing is interpreting Bach’s music rather than dancing to it. Different dancers represent different notes, and electronic beats fuse the gaps between the two disparate worlds without at all bastardising the original score. If there was any way Bach could have seen this coming 300 years ago, he'd no doubt approve.
Recent years have seen the rise of musical comedies making their way back to the big screen. Enchanted, The Muppets and even the selection of High School Musical films have led music back to being a key feature in cinema. Throw Glee into the pop culture mix, and spontaneous singing in public is once again normal. In the middle of this comes Pitch Perfect. Beca (Anna Kendrick), is a college freshman and far too cool for any college society. With a not very well-written inciting incident, Beca ends up joining the Barden Bellas a capella group and finds a collection of rag tag gals to become bosom buddies with. While the sentimental scenes are corny and the plot drivers are crazy obvious, this is still a hilariously self aware, sharp and perfectly harmonised film. Rebel Wilson hits heights not seen in previous Hollywood flicks as Fat Amy, and despite Anna Kendrick's terrible posture (for acting classes on not giving a crap, just slouch), she plays college age well. And she can sing. They all can sing. America (and Tasmania, as Fat Amy claims to originate from) must train their kids in the womb to hit the high notes. With a collection of playful winks at the audience (an Australian audience particularly will get a few kicks — stay for the credits) and some good old competition movie fun, this film was a surprisingly raucous rendition. I'm getting the soundtrack. https://youtube.com/watch?v=siEHekc-1oE
Watch this video. A young woman is walking through a park, purposefully. Slowing down, she sees a white note tagged on a sandstone monument. She pauses to detach the card, and peers down carefully at it. Her back slumps a little, she laughs to herself. She turns around suddenly, looking for the prankster responsible for the card. She continues turning then strides toward a man sitting on a bench nearby and introduces herself as Batman. Had she picked up a different card, she might have spoken in a robot voice or started the conversation with a line from a movie. It's the old game of Truth or Dare. The new incarnation started in New York City as a way to break down the barriers between people in public places. Those opting for the 'truth' side of the card these days tweet their responses using the appropriate hashtag. Truth or Dare Sydney had its first game at Jurassic Lounge in August of 2012, and now it will return for another round at Bondi Beach over Australia Day weekend. Look out for the little white cards on streets, in cafes and shops, and along the beach. It's a great concept and an experiment in courage and goofiness. Here's hoping enough people have the guts to hug a stranger or quack loudly for 10 seconds or work the lyrics of Rick Astley's 'Never Gonna Give You Up' into their next conversation.
Oh, the things that creative couples can do! Jon Hamm and his partner Jennifer Westfeldt may be the latest amazingly talented pairing on the Hollywood scene, hopefully with a lot less drama than those we read about in the gossip rags. Hamm, the loveable face we've come to know from Mad Men, once again gets to show off his comedy chops in Friends with Kids, not to mention also take a producer credit on the film. But it's Westfeldt who steals the show, writing, directing, and starring in this very interesting rom-com about having children that manages to leave out the schmaltz. Julie (Westfeldt) and Jason (the very funny Adam Scott) have been friends since college days and share absolutely everything with each other, except themselves. While all their friends are coupling up and deciding to have children, they are continually searching for 'the one' that they can finally settle down with and procreate. After seeing their friends' marriages deteriorate at the arrival of children, however, they decide to go for parenthood as friends so as not to kill the romance. While the path to your typical Hollywood rom-com is crazy clear with this plot description, the journey there isn't. The characters are witty, real, and very well-crafted for screen. Relationships in pain and the reality of having children and how it changes you are very clearly and thoughtfully portrayed without always going for the easy comic route. While this film may only particularly reach an audience at the time in their lives when all their friends are having children, there's enough fiery banter along the lines of a slightly more crass Chandler Bing coming from Scott and Westfeldt that most viewers will find something to laugh at. The film is not without fault; it is slightly long in places, and it's unclear why they get Chris O'Dowd to do an American accent when he quite clearly can't. But with a spectacular support cast that might as well be a reunion special for Bridesmaids, this could be the Bridget Jones's Diary meets Knocked Up of the teens. Read about the history of relationships on screen, and what they say about us.
Here’s the lowdown for Art & About 2012: art doesn’t belong in galleries. It belongs in our cities and streets and in our everyday lives. Streets aren’t just for street artists, but all artists. And maybe all artists could be considered ‘street artists’, not just the ones with a graffiti vibe. Ripping art out of the territorial zone of the hushed gallery - it’s an exciting concept and one that could transform our city. In September and October, it will transform our city. Art & About festival puts art in unusual spaces, marshalling artists out of the silent white cube gallery and into stairwells, intersections, billboards and building facades. The artists are photographers, installation artists, sculptors and everything in between. The locations are everywhere: Taylor Square, Green Square, Martin Place, Glebe Library, Hotel Australia and the Rocks Pop Up studios and a whole bunch more. Check out our handpicked selection of festival highlights, opening night street party, closing night moveable feast and night noodle markets, as well as the full exhibition program. Image: Paired Gold by Stephen Collier and Kim Connerton.
If Rainbow Chan is playing a show you know it’s going to be worth seeing. But if Rainbow Chan is playing a free show that also features a crazy mélange of sounds ranging from deep southern country to wash basin bass-heavy ragtime, it definitely falls into the category of “unmissable”. Cowboys in the Amazon is one such show, and the headline event from the Sydney Fringe’s festival hub Five Eliza. In the space of four hours six acts will take you from the Deep South of Country through the Mississippi Delta, stopping over in Tinsel Town before teleporting you to an exotic Amazonian rainforest thumping with the textural beats of our aforementioned electro goddess. Helping out with the transportation will be deep American blues country band The Boy Outside, 1950s sweethearts Lily So & Co and the clankering Rusty Spring Syncopators (with kazoo, washboard, wash basin bass and saw in tow). The best things in life aren’t always free, but when they are you should probably take advantage.
Say what you will about any hidden meaning behind the 1963 song, but Piff The Magic Dragon is more straightforward. It's a funny guy wearing a shiny dragon suit and doing amazing magic tricks with cards and fire, and there's also a tiny Chihuahua called Mr Piffles involved. If that's the sort of thing you think you could sit through for 60 minutes then don't miss Edinburgh Fringe's knockout new performance when Piff touches down for his Sydney Opera House debut. This latest instalment in the adventures of Piff apparently centre around him searching for a princess and striving to be crowned the greatest magic dragon of all time, but less important than the storyline are the stunning theatrics. Piff is the creation of John van der Put, The Magic Circle Close-up Magician of the year 2011 and an award-winning contemporary magician for the past 15 years. Impressive enough, but throw dragon costumes, fire and tiny dogs into the mix and you have a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. https://youtube.com/watch?v=2bCZv2ozQD8
The John Fries Memorial Prize at Gaffa Gallery features 20 emerging artists competing for a $10,000 prize. It's a 'pick and mix' of young contemporary visual artists — a spot of installation here; an abstract painting, a sculpture there — and worth visiting just to see the work of Philjames, who overpaints on the kind of daggy landscapes you might find for $15 at an op shop. In …(to the tune of The Simpsons) he combines this style with installation to bind art history and contemporary pop culture in one long continuum. Bart Simpson appears to be inserted, regal and statue-like, into a traditional modernist painting. A fibreglass sculpture of Chairman Mao Zedong is cast in the shiny style of a Simpsons character, who looks onto the painting adoringly. In swapping the roles of cartoon icon (Bart Simpson) and newly merchandised historical figure, Philjames exposes the ways consumer culture creates and venerates unlikely heroes. Make sure you drop into the excellent Gaffa gallery shop while you're there. It houses the wares of local contemporary sculptors and jewellery-makers, the kind of one-off stuff you just don’t see elsewhere.
What makes a nation? What makes a national identity? What makes a national cinema? Hopefully the AICE Israeli Film Festival will answer these questions and a few more and give us a chance to learn about this country and culture, which many of us mainly know through the news. Returning for the ninth year, the festival is bigger than ever, with twice the number of films and reaching out beyond Sydney and Melbourne to take in Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth for the first time. The program will be showcasing the best in Israeli cinema over the last 12 months and a cinema industry which, whilst still somewhat in its infancy, finally has a chance to grow and compete on the world stage, thanks to substantial injection from the Israeli government. There are feature films and documentaries covering topics as diverse as family, tradition, gender identity, the Middle East conflict, and religious life, and several of the films are prize winners from prestigious festivals including Sundance, Berlin, Karlovy Vary, Jerusalem, and San Sebastian, as well as winners from the 2011 Ophirs (Israeli 'Oscars'). A highlight of the festival is the provocative and touching family drama The Other Son (Le fils de l'autre) by French director Lorraine Levy. Two young men on the cusp of manhood — one Israeli, the other Palestinian — have their worlds turned upside down when they learn that they were accidently switched at birth. In the turmoil that follows, questions of identity and nationhood are raised, opening up a veritable can of worms, which Levy handles with thoughtfulness and sensitivity. It is a sentimental tale, which questions notions of identity against the volatile backdrop of the divided lands of Israel and Palestine. The festival kicks off on August 15 at the Palace Verona with Restoration, a touching story about generational conflict and fatherhood.
He has been called "the great dissenter" by some, a "judicial activist" by others. But perhaps the most accurate description of Michael Kirby is his official moniker: "the Honourable". Since his retirement from the High Court of Australia, Kirby has been bold enough to speak out on the big issues that confront us: sexual equality, same-sex marriage, religious conflict, and international human rights. His legal career has turned on the idea that justice and judging is not a cold, mechanical affair but a matter of the heart and the mind, and that progress belongs to the bold. Kirby will be speaking about all these big ideas, "On Law, Love and Life", this month at the Opera House with his biographer, filmmaker Daryl Dellora. It's a unique chance to overhear a conversation with one of Australia's most respected and outspoken thinkers, a public figure who speaks sanely and cuts through the PR 'blah blah blah' factor that dominates most of this country's national conversation. It's also the release of his authorised biography.
It is a dark, alternate world that Antony Hamilton and Melanie Lane manifest in their Spring Dance double-bill, Clouds Above Berlin. This pair of Australian expats have combined two pieces — Lane's solo Tilted Fawn and Hamilton's duet Black Project 1 — unifying them with a shared attention to detail and tight control of their palettes. In Tilted Fawn, Lane composes a sonic architecture using masked tape recorders, building up a score by UK electronic artist Clark. Rafael Bonachela, artistic director of the Sydney Dance Company and curator of Spring Dance 2012, calls this work intense and cerebral, so expect abstract movement poetry here. While also abstract, Black Project 1 links Hamilton's popping movements with Olaf Meyer's light projections to create a world of primitive — or, suggests Bonachela, post-apocalyptic — creatures illustrating their existence. Both pieces that compose Clouds Above Berlin are more than dance dressed with set, sound and lights; they are sculptures in time, and eager to be viewed as such. https://youtube.com/watch?v=5Z4Bd90puQE
Serial Space is not your usual deathly quiet, hermetically sealed, white cube gallery; it is somewhere new things happen, where strange and wonderful things that didn't exist before come into being. It's an art space where boundaries merge and genres are thrown into question. And in the crush for affordable studio, exhibition and performance space in Sydney, it's a place where artists are given free reign to experiment and, if need be, fail. The ability to fail and experiment is more crucial than it sounds, because it is a precursor to creative growth, and a necessary one at that. In short, it is often simply too expensive to fail in Sydney; we run the risk of pricing creativity out of the picture. Serial Space's latest project is Time Machine, a wave of performances, exhibitions and participatory nights by experimental artists who create live excursions into sound- and time-based art. It's an adventurous program across several inner city venues, and here are a few highlights: - A workshop on how to build your own solar-powered analogue synthesiser by Samuel Bryce. - The Great Man Debate: That men can't be feminists. - Six degrees of Ned Kelly, a performance lecture about the number of degrees of separation between Ned Kelly and you by Melita Rowtson. - Video Hits: three musos and three video artists rip apart and reconstruct the conventions of the music video. Includes Marcus Whale of Collarbones and Oscar Slorach-Thorn of oscar+martin. - Step Back dance party of electronic glory with Cliques (a duo featuring one half of Seekae), Tyson Koh, Four Door and Tuff Sherm. - The official Time Machine bar at Freda's Bar & Canteen (107-109 Regent St, Chippendale) with daily drinks specials.
