Sukhjit Kaur Khalsa, Fence sitting 2, 2018. Photo courtesy the artist.
We’ve recapped the hottest headlines, announcements and arts news that shaped the zeitgeist this past week.
Jump to: Be in the know Quick Diary Dates What’s on Review highlights
CITY ACTIVATIONS: 18 activations are set to delight visitors to the City of Melbourne in the coming months, thanks to $800,000 to support exciting pop-ups, performances and events across Melbourne from August to December. Check out where.
THEATRE REOPENS: Redevelopment of Brisbane’s Thomas Dixon Centre, located in Brisbane’s West End, increasing the arts space by six fold, has opened with a swag of new performance this month.
NEW LIBRARY (NSW): Snowy Monaro Regional Council is excited to announce that the the new Jindabyne Library will open its doors this weekend. Jindabyne was the largest regional town in NSW without a library facility, beyond the travelling mobile library, so this is a great step for the region and there are many in the community who have campaigned hard for this over the years.
Book review, Raised By Wolves, Jess Ho ★★★★☆ Lifting the lid on food and hospo culture.
Dance review: Terrain ★★★★★ This award-winning show about the convergence of body, land and spirit returns for its tenth year anniversary.
Exhibition: Allison Chhorn: Skin Shade Night Day ★★★★☆ An immersive installation featuring the rituals of family life from an Australian-Cambodian artist.
Concert review: Bungul, Darwin Festival ★★★★1/2 ☆ A remarkable fusion of Yolŋu culture and the Western classical music tradition performed under the stars for the festival’s opening night.
Theatre review: Request Programme ★★★★☆ A devastating portrait of existential loneliness.
Head to our Reviews page for more.
MIGRATION STORY (VIC): Benalla Art Gallery in partnership with 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art, Sydney (4A), will present Bush Diwan (pictured top). The exhibition is inspired by the local story of Siva Singh, who arrived in Australia in approximately 1896 and was a Benalla resident who worked as a hawker from 1898. He took on the duties of a Granthi or custodian of the Sikh scriptures in Benalla and surrounding regions, until a Siri Guru Granth Sahib Ji was sent from India to Siva in Benalla in 1920. Bush Diwan presents works by artists who have responded to this pivotal moment in Sikh history in Australia by exploring the reclamation of identity, forming, gathering and laying foundations of community.
Bush Diwan is curated by Amrit Gill and Reina Takeuchi, and features works by six artists; Manisha Anjali, Anindita Banerjee, Monisha Chippada, Sukhjit Kaur Khalsa and Perun Bonser, and Amardeep Shergill. Each artist brings a different perspective to the thematics and intentions of the project using media ranging from screen and stills, to sound, performance, sculpture and textile. Showing 5 August – 16 October at Benalla.
HARBOUR SIDE ART TRAIL (NSW): Art Pharmacy’s latest project features 30 life-size whale tail sculptures along the Western Sydney Waterfront, a 6km art trail that links Barangaroo, through Cockle Bay to the Fish Market, from 11 August – 24 September. Artists include Archibald prize winner and First Nations artist Blak Douglas, illustrator and animator Chris Yee aka Pink Bits, artist, author and illustrator Sha’an d’Anthes aka Furry Little Peach, environmental activist Laura Wells, Bronwen Smith and Gavin Chatfield of the Gwiyaala Aboriginal Art Collective, among others.
RETELLING OF HAMLET (VIC): In Amleth-No-Lander_Mark, groundbreaking director, storyteller and actor Elnaz Sheshgelani draws on a 3000-year-old Persian storytelling artform – Naghali – to breathe new soul and tension into one of Shakespeare’s most popular works, Hamlet. Performing at La Mama HQ, 24 August – 4 September.
REFRESHED GALLERY OPENS (NSW): The Australia Design Centre (ADC) has reopened after a quick refurbishment, with the Profile: Contemporary Jewellery and Object Award 2022 exhibition. 73 contemporary designer/makers have made new work using everything from precious gold to plastic waste; 4 August – 28 September. A program of talks, tours and bench demonstrations across the exhibition and give greater insight into the makers’ processes.
ROVING THEATRE (VIC): Split Focus’ site-specific adventure Attempts on her Life by Martin Crimp, will be performed at The Stables Meat Market from 18 – 27 August. The show is an anthology of 17 scenes about identity that are going to take audiences from one room to the next. Directed by Angelica Clunes and Samuel Boyd, it flickers between comedy, pop-opera, campfire ghost-story and absurdist tragedy. The cast features people performing in fluent Indonesian and French, with dancing and singing live.
CROSS VENUE FESTIVAL: Marking its 2nd instalment, BLEED – Biennial Live Event in the Everyday Digital – has today unveiled its 2022 program, introducing new Taiwanese partners expanding across the Asia Pacific. Crossing borders, and presented in three cities and four organisations – Arts House (Melbourne), Campbelltown Arts Centre (Sydney), Taipei Performing Arts Center, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei – BLEED 22 premieres eight ‘live’ and nine ‘digital’ contemporary art commissions – IRL and online from 25 August – 29 September.
OZASIA PROGRAM OUT (SA): Adelaide Festival Centre’s OzAsia Festival had announced its program of more than 50 ticketed and free events and exhibitions over three fabulous weeks, eight countries and 10 world premieres. It continues to bring the best contemporary Asian and Asian Australian performance, art, literature, cuisine, and culture, taking place from 20 October 20 – 6 November. Check out Artistic Director, Annette Shun Wah’s program. Tickets on sale this week.
BELL TOURING: Following sell-out performances in Sydney and Canberra in 2021, Bell Shakespeare presents an intimate performance by company Founding Artistic Director John Bell, One Man In His Time: John Bell and Shakespeare. Bell will perform in the company’s new theatre space, the Neilson Nutshell at Pier 2/3 at Walsh Bay Arts Precinct from 2 – 3 September, before performing the show at The Arts Centre Melbourne from 9 – 10 September.
FINNISH VIRTUOSO TOURING: Internationally renowned Finnish piano virtuoso Olli Mustonen will return to Australia to perform a national tour with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, hitting venues in Newcastle, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Wollongong from 15 – 28 September. Tickets via ACO.
WRITERS FESTIVAL (VIC): Some of Australia’s best-known literary personalities will convene for the Dunkeld Writers Festival from the 26 – 28 August in the Grampians. With a wide variety of writers, from senior journalists, influential government workers, Aboriginal cultural heritage experts, editors, publishers and award-winning authors, the weekend festival will be a great cultural weekend get away. Check out the program and plan your visit.
RARE TOP END ART (NSW): S.H. Ervin Gallery is presenting Heart of Country: Arnhem Land Barks, an exhibition that brings together the work of four generations of Indigenous artists. Curated by The Drill Hall Gallery, it draws from the private collection of Donna-Marie Kelly and Andrew Dyer. ‘This collection musters compelling evidence that, alongside the clear continuity of tradition in bark painting, there is also an openness to innovation,’ says the gallery. Showing until 11 September.
OBJECT LOVE (SA): Fantastical Worlds is an exhibition that inspires wonder. Drawn from the holding of the Powerhouse Collection, and curated by Eva Czernis-Ryl, it travels to the David Roche Foundation House Museum in Adelaide, opening 12 August. Inspired by elaborate European art styles from the past such as Baroque, Rococo and Empire, contemporary artists such as Timothy Horn, Alexander McQueen, Kate Rohde and Timorous Beasties imaginatively transform historical ideas, forms and patterns into striking 21st century creations.
MAJOR ACQUISITION ON SHOW (ACT): More than 100 emerging and established artists from Far North Queensland and the Torres Strait took part in the Belonging project run by art centres from across the region and the Indigenous Art Centre Alliance (IACA). The outcome of the project is now on show at the National Museum, which has acquired the collection of 415 artworks created by 103 artists working in 11 art centres across the region: Bana Yirriji Art, Girringun Aboriginal Art Centre, Hopevale Arts & Cultural Centre, Mornington Island Art, Pormpuraaw Art & Culture Centre, Wik & Kugu Art Centre, Yalanji Arts, Yarrabah Arts Centre, Wei’Num Arts, Badu Art Centre and Moa Arts.
The first iteration of the Belonging: Stories from Far North Queensland exhibition features 120 works by 29 artists working in Hope Vale, Yarrabah, Moa Island and Mornington Island and will be on display in the Museum’s Focus Gallery until 12 February 2023. Works from the other seven art centres will feature in exhibitions opening at the National Museum in 2023 and 2024.
PHOTOGRAPHING WESTERN SYDNEY: The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in partnership with Parramatta Artists’ Studios have launched this year’s C3West project Being Together: Parramatta Yearbook. Presented in Parramatta’s Centenary Square, this large-scale photographic installation by C3West artist Cherine Fahd celebrates Parramatta and its people through photography and performance, and runs until 3 October. Opening celebration, Saturday 13 August, 11am – 12pm, Centenary Square, Parramatta, and Parramatta Yearbook photo walk, Saturday 17 September, 3pm – 5pm.
THEATRE WITH EMOTION (VIC): Bed & Breakfast by Mark Crawford is a Fairly Lucid Productions, and is as riotously funny as it is deeply moving. When characters Brett & Drew inherit a family estate and move to a quiet little tourist town to set up a B&B they discover the simple life is more complicated than they thought. Showing at Chapel off Chapel, 7 – 18 September.
TENNANT CREEK CELEBRATED (NT): A men’s artist collective from Tennant Creek is featuring works as a part of Charles Darwin University (CDU) Art Gallery’s latest exhibition, Shock and Ore, which opens this week. The exhibition features recent artworks by a unique artist collective of fringe dwellers and cultural leaders named The Tennant Creek Brio, which was formed in 2016 out of a successful art therapy outreach program set up by Anyinginyi Health Aboriginal Corporation. The exhibition is on display in two-parts at the Charles Darwin University Art Gallery and Coconut Studios in Coconut Groven in Brinkin NT – at the very northern tip of top end.
EXPLORING TEXT (WA): Opening at AGWA, Speech Patterns is an entwined and layered conversation between the work of contemporary artists Nadia Hernández and Jon Campbell, and moves across paintings, paste-ups, drawings, posters, banners and flags. ‘While emerging from different cultural and generational experiences, their practices share a powerful commitment to the grain and poetry of egalitarian yearning and grassroots resistance,’ says AGWA Curator, Robert Cook. 24 September 2022 – 8 February 2023.
ILLUSIONIST (NSW): For the first time, acclaimed illusionist Melbourne born, Michael Boyd brings his magic and illusion spectacular MYSTIQUE to State Theatre, Sydney for two shows only on 29 September.
CERAMIC AWARD EXHIBITION (VIC): Now in its seventh iteration, the 2022 Indigenous Ceramic Award (ICA) is presenting 26 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists and collectives from all over Australia in an exhibition at Shepparton Art Museum (SAM) opening 13 August.
It is paired with the exhibition Kaleidoscope, which presents an abundance of glossy domestic ceramics from the SAM Collection. Showing until 29 January.
FASHION ICON EXHIBITION (NSW): The massively influential and iconic fashion designer and artist Linda Jackson will be having a solo exhibition at Bathurst Regional Art Gallery moving across her diverse works including fashion, textiles, paintings and photography. Linda Jackson: Romance of the Swag, showing 13 August – 30 October.
‘Linda Jackson is a true Australian icon’, says Sarah Gurich, Director, BRAG. ‘This exhibition spans four decades of her prolific career in a vibrant celebration of colour, fashion, art, and travel.’
CHORAL TOUR: Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC), City Recital Hall and Melbourne Recital Centre announced this week that The Tallis Scholars: Music for the Sistine Chapel will return to Australia for a national tour, stopping by the QPAC Concert Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre, Melbourne and City Recital Hall, Sydney in October. For more than 40 years, The Tallis Scholars have established themselves as the world’s leading exponents of Renaissance sacred music. This is the first time since 2016 that the choral ensembles returns to Australia.
TASSY TOUR: In 2022, PARKER by Tash Parker will deliver a series of live performance and exhibition shows across the east coast of Australia as a part of her Body of Work tour combining film, music, composition, animation and costume. This is Parker’s first large-scale touring exhibition and will feature works made over the last five years. Using sound and vision to sculpt and disrupt space, each exhibition and performance in the series reacts explicitly to the venues’ architecture. Catch it at Salamanca Arts Centre Long Gallery in Hobart, for the Winter Light Festival, 19 – 20 August before heading to Brisbane in September. For more info and venues.
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Gina Fairley is ArtsHub's National Visual Arts Editor. For a decade she worked as a freelance writer and curator across Southeast Asia and was previously the Regional Contributing Editor for Hong Kong based magazines Asian Art News and World Sculpture News. Prior to writing she worked as an arts manager in America and Australia for 14 years, including the regional gallery, biennale and commercial sectors. She is based in Mittagong, regional NSW. Twitter: @ginafairley Instagram: fairleygina
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