Dee Jefferson

What is The National? It’s a festival of new Australian art that will happen every two years for at least three editions: 2017/2019/2021. This means – phew – it will be alternating with Sydney's other major art festival: the Biennale of Sydney. When is it? The first edition The National Biennial of New Australian Art opened March 30 and runs for slightly different durations at each venue. Where is it? It’s at Art Gallery of New South Wales, Carriageworks and the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). How many artists are presenting works within the festival? 48 – roughly divided into a third of that number per venue. Who chose the artists? Each venue appointed specific curators (from among their curatorial staff) for their part of The National, and the resulting curatorial collective chose the artists. Below you can see a breakdown of the curators and artists at each venue. What kind of art is it? All kinds of art. There are paintings, drawings, photographs, textile works, sculptures, installations, sculpture installations, video works – you get the jist. Why is it exciting? It’s particularly exciting because the works are predominantly new, and created specifically for this festival. When you think that each edition of The National will present new work by about 48 artists, with no guiding theme or limitations, you start to see the potential for this exhibition to be a snapshot of what are artists are interested in or concerned about right now. What else? There will be a public

Anyone who says they go to the opera for the sound quality is lying; if you want the ultimate version of any given opera, you sit at home with your Bose headphones and your imagination. But if you want the spectacle and emotion of the opera, head to Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour (HOSH), Opera Australia's now-annual outdoor production at Mrs Macquarie's Point. Opera Australia artistic director Lyndon Terracini wanted to make opera a populist form again – and he has abundantly succeeded with Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour. The recipe is simple but brilliant: take one stunning outdoor location with a world-class view, add spectacular, over-the-top set design, razzle-dazzle costumes, dance routines and acrobatics; into this mix, drop one high-drama opera classic, and a couple of international star leads. Finish with a dash of fireworks, and serve in possibly the best, balmy summer Sydney has to offer. The result is the perfect potion – the glitzy visuals and hyperactive energy of a Broadway musical mixed with world-class opera. Even better, the themed food and drinks menu, consumed while overlooking the harbour as dusk falls, renders your purchase a bona fide experience, and worth the hefty price. For its eighth edition in 2019, Opera Australia is doing something a bit different and staging its first musical on the grand harbourside stage: West Side Story. For what it's worth, we think it's the perfect choice for the event – it's a tragic tale, operatic in scale, and features some

The centre of Opera Australia’s 2018 season is nothing to sneeze at – and something many opera and theatre lovers will applaud: Barrie Kosky’s return to Opera Australia, 19 years after he directed Wozzeck for them. Since then, and as the artistic director of Berlin’s Komische Oper from 2012, he has become one of the poster boys for opera’s international revival as an artform, with vivid, politically charged and dramaturgically accessible productions including The Magic Flute (slated for a 2019 appearance in Australia) and Saul (at Adelaide Festival in 2017). Kosky’s production of Dmitri Shostakovich’s absurdist 1930 opera The Nose – a co-production between Opera Australia, the Royal Opera Covent Garden and the Komische Oper Berlin – will open in February at Sydney Opera House, for just five performances. (It premiered in October 2016 at Covent Garden.) Shostakovich wrote The Nose at the tender age of 20, inspired by Nikolai Gogol’s short stories ‘The Overcoat’ (1842) and ‘The Nose’ (1836), in which he satirises the newly wealthy middle classes of 19th century St Petersburg. In The Nose, a civil servant wakes up to find his nose has absconded – and can be found parading the streets of St Petersburg in a coat finer than his own, and a rank exceeding his own. Kosky’s production features an English-language libretto (translated from Russian by David Pountney) and design by his regular collaborators Klaus Grünberg (set and lighting design) and Buki Shiff (costume design). The cho

Forget Sydney and Melbourne and take a trip down south to Adelaide instead. The capital city of the state of South Australia is bustling with life and there’s plenty to see, do and eat when you visit.

One hundred artists and designers from more than 30 countries will take over the four floors of the National Gallery of Victoria’s St Kilda Road HQ this summer, for the inaugural NGV Triennial. We shadowed three key personnel to witness how this behemoth exhibition comes together.

If you're after emerging and experimental art, the best place to look is the independent spaces run by artists themselves, who tend to be more focused on the production of interesting work than profitable work. Sydney has a healthy ecosystem of artist-run initiatives (ARIs) – here are some key ones to get you started.

It might have earned the nickname ‘City of Churches’, but Adelaide is seriously hip these days, home to some of the most exciting restaurants, wine-makers, providores and cultural festivals. In 2017, the city was proclaimed fifth most ‘liveable’ city in the world – for the sixth year in a row – by The Economist. Short of moving there, we’d suggest a holiday. Find more short getaways from Melbourne, plus a how to spend a weekend in Rutherglen, Canberra or Hobart.

It might have earned the nickname ‘City of Churches’, but Adelaide is seriously hip these days, home to some of the most exciting restaurants, wine-makers, providores and cultural festivals. In 2017, the city was proclaimed fifth most ‘liveable’ city in the world – for the sixth year in a row – by The Economist. Short of moving there, we’d suggest a holiday. Find more short getaways from Sydney, plus a how to spend a weekend in the Whitsundays, Port Douglas or Narooma. 

Commercial art galleries are run for profit rather than public interest, but some of Sydney's best seem made for art lovers, with thoughtfully curated exhibitions that are free, in gallery spaces that are conducive to leisurely browsing. Like what you see? Bonus: you can probably buy it.

In the ten years since it kicked off at Sydney's Carriageworks, Sydney's Underbelly Arts Lab and Festival has consistently pulled in visitors from across the country. Make the trip from Melbourne to Sydney and sink your teeth into the tenth iteration of Underbelly's festival of arts music and performance.  The biennial festival has established itself as a sort of alt-Biennale: smaller, local-focused, but consistently facilitating artists with large visions, and creating a festival that has always been immersive and interactive in its presentation of 'art'.  In 2017, under first-time Festival Director (and practising artist) Roslyn Helper, the Lab and Festival is moving from Cockatoo Island (where it held the 2011-2015 editions) back into the inner city: National Art School.  Underbelly Arts is also extending its Lab program this year, with tours of the artworks-in-progress over the two weeks (Sep 25-Oct 6) leading up to the weekend Festival (Oct 7 & 8). The opening night party, on Friday Oct 6, is the ticket you need if you like your art with bands + DJs + dancefloor. The full line-up for Underbelly Arts Lab & Festival is: Shian Law, Harriet Gillies and Natalie Abbott, Ivey Wawn, House of Vnholy (Matthew Adey), Anonymous Migrant (Sudeep Lingamneni and Nikki Lam), Fugitive Moments (Barnaby Lewer and Tristan Derátz), Pony Express (Ian Sinclair and Loren Kronemyer), Amrita Hepi with Prue Stent and Honey Long, Siân McIntyre and Sophie Mallett, Make or Break (Rebecca Gallo and Con

Founded in 2002 by ongoing artistic directors Antony Walker and Erin Helyard, Pinchgut is somewhat true to its name: it stages smaller productions where the music and musicians are first, and the production values (sets, costumes, audio-visual whizbangery) are second.  Given this mission, the baroque and renaissance repertoire is a good fit for size – but just as importantly, it was also an untapped niche in opera when they started the company. As they point out: "More operas were composed before 1750 than after. Except perhaps for a few by Handel, very few are performed these days. We think there is a huge treasure trove of marvellous works that Australian audiences have not seen. Cavalli, Vivaldi, Monteverdi, Rameau, Grétry, Salieri and Charpentier are almost unheard of, as opera composers, in this country. Other companies do the more familiar operas excellently; we want to help audiences discover something new." Time Out Sydney classical music editor Jason Catlett wrote in his review of their 2016 production of Vivaldi's Bajazet: "Pinchgut aren't just a world-beating opera company, they are musical archeologists with a track record of unearthing amazing treasures from the Baroque period and displaying them with great thought and care. Their fully staged productions often astonish, never because of any grandiose directorial whim, but often due to faithfully reproduced period attributes that have become unfamiliar." Pinchgut perform with the period instrument ensemble Orches

You can see the results of degrees in fine arts, sociology and graphic design in the works of Emily Floyd – but even more evident than these, perhaps, is her upbringing in a family whose business was toymaking. Her sculpture installations mix toy-like forms and text to run commentary on contemporary social situations and issues. For the National Biennial of New Australian Art, she created an impressive installation for the foyer of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, inspired by the writings of science fiction novelist and amateur anthropologist Ursula K. Le Guin. “I’m not an expert [on her work] but I like how she creates a world, and her interest in gender and ambiguity of gender.” Specifically, Floyd’s ‘Kesh Alphabet’ is inspired a imaginary civilisation of people called the Kesh, who appeared in Le Guin’s novel Always Coming Home (among other works). “Her parents were anthropologists who worked in the California area with Native Americans, and Le Guin was very influenced by this,” Floyd explains. “She designed an anthropological text for the ‘Kesh’, featuring their songs, their stories, what they ate, and their language.” Floyd made a ‘type’ for the Kesh language, and applied it to an edited version of her glossary – for example, you can see how the Kesh wrote the word for “female orgasm”. “I wanted to put this text in this space because of its masculine nature,” says Floyd. “Despite the fact that it’s populated by women and run by women, they’ve had problems with their

This artwork was removed in November 2017. One of the most recognisable pieces of public art in Sydney – thanks to its colours and its prominent position in Taylor Square – Reko Rennie’s building ‘skin’ reclaims space for its traditional owners. This is Aboriginal land – specifically, Gadigal land. The diamond patterns, which recur through Rennie’s art practice, reference his connection to the Kamilaroi people of north-western NSW.

This gallery was co-founded by artists-turned-gallerists Suzanne Hampel and Fran Clark in 2001, in a former warehouse space in Melbourne's arty Flinders Lane. It counts major Australian artists such as Janet Laurence, Imants Tillers and Pat Brassington amongst its stable.

Located within the University of Melbourne, this is the Australian outpost of the international project Science Gallery International (SGI), spearheaded by Trinity College Dublin and launched in 2012. The gallery is designed to exhibit works in which art and science intersect, for the purposes of engaging a broader public audience in understanding, consuming and responding to scientific knowledge.

This 80-seat ‘traverse’ theatre (where the audience sits on either side of the stage, facing each other) is run by Bakehouse Theatre company: directors (and husband and wife) Suzanne Millar and John Harrison, and production manager and resident stage manager Andrew McMartin. Bakehouse opened the space in late 2015, with the support of the Kings Cross Hotel’s owners, and Miller describes 2016 as an act of survival: proving they could get the crowds. 2017 is the first fully curated season of works, and mixes Bakehouse productions with those of other independent companies. The major focus for Millar, a New Zealander with Maori heritage who started as an actor, is diversity of storytellers and theatre-makers, and providing a platform for ultra-indie companies.

Opened in 1982 and renovated in 2010, Australia’s national gallery houses important Australian, Indigenous, Pacific, Asian, American and European masterpieces, including Jackson Pollock’s ‘Blue Poles’ and Constantin Brancusi’s ‘Bird in Space’. In 2015 the NGA established a department of contemporary international arts practice, focusing on post-millennial art, particularly moving image, performance and installation. It's worth the trek to Canberra for the NGA’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art collection – the largest in the world, comprised of over 7500 works, and displayed in a purpose-built wing. In fact the first artwork you encounter as you step into the NGA’s foyer is the Ramingining artists’ ‘Aboriginal Memorial’ (1987-88), an installation featuring 200 hollow log coffins from central Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. Unveiled in conjunction with the Bicentenary, the work commemorates the deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across 200 years of colonisation. The NGA also has one of Californian artist James Turrell’s ‘Skyspaces’ as part of its collection: a site-specific built environment situated in the Australian Garden, with a hole in the ceiling from which a ‘screen’ of sky can be seen, and within which the quality and colour of light appears to change throughout the day. Make sure you check the best viewing times before your visit. The other major ‘must see’ at the NGA is the Sculpture Garden, which features work by Auguste Rodin,

Opened in 1982 and renovated in 2010, Australia’s national gallery houses important Australian, Indigenous, Pacific, Asian, American and European masterpieces, including Jackson Pollock’s ‘Blue Poles’ and Constantin Brancusi’s ‘Bird in Space’. In 2015 the NGA established a department of contemporary international arts practice, focusing on post-millennial art, particularly moving image, performance and installation. It's worth the trek to Canberra for the NGA’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art collection – the largest in the world, comprised of over 7500 works, and displayed in a purpose-built wing. In fact the first artwork you encounter as you step into the NGA’s foyer is the Ramingining artists’ ‘Aboriginal Memorial’ (1987-88), an installation featuring 200 hollow log coffins from central Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory. Unveiled in conjunction with the Bicentenary, the work commemorates the deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people across 200 years of colonisation. The NGA also has one of Californian artist James Turrell’s ‘Skyspaces’ as part of its collection: a site-specific built environment situated in the Australian Garden, with a hole in the ceiling from which a ‘screen’ of sky can be seen, and within which the quality and colour of light appears to change throughout the day. Make sure you check the best viewing times before your visit. The other major ‘must see’ at the NGA is the Sculpture Garden, which features work by Auguste Rodin,

This gallery, shop and art consultancy was founded by Juliet Rosser in 2012 with a mission to shine a light on emerging Australian artists and connect businesses and individuals with affordable art works.  Platform 72 had a previous life on Oxford Street and also in Chippendale, before moving to the TWT Creative Precinct in St Leonards, where the business has focused on its art consultancy aspect, transforming private, public and commercial spaces with art.

The practice of Sydney artist Jason Wing is influenced by his Chinese and Indigenous heritage. This artwork, commissioned by City of Sydney council as part of a revitalisation of three laneways in Chinatown, is no different: it incorporates Chinese and Aboriginal motifs, including “auspicious clouds” and spirit figures that represent ancestors. Wing designed the work to be a passage, between heaven and earth – so walk through the lane to get the full effect.

The process for this artwork began a whopping ten years before it was installed in 2010. As part of a public art project called ‘Life Under the Freeway’, workshops were held with local community members to develop a brief – which was then opened for expressions of interest from artists. Local artist Warren Langley was chosen by members of the City’s Public Art Advisory Panel and the local community, based on an initial concept that referenced a successful community action in 1974 to preserve local housing in Fig Street (adjacent to the work), which was scheduled for demolition for the North-Western Expressway.

Melbourne-based artist and Kamilaroi man Reko Rennie created this mural with eight young local Aboriginal people, as the result of a commission by the City of Sydney and curator Hetti Perkins. Like Rennie’s perhaps better known building mural in Taylor Square, ‘Always Was  and Always Will Be’, this work is envisaged as a powerful statement about Aboriginal presence on – and original ownership of – the land. ‘Welcome to Redfern’ was the first commission in the ‘Eora Journey’ public art project in Redfern. The Victorian terrace he was tasked with transforming is the site for a forthcoming “living museum” of The Block. Rennie asked the teens what they wanted on the building, and they decided they wanted text, and a figure to represent the past. After much workshopping and searching the archives, they settled on an image of an Aboriginal man in a bark canoe in Botany Bay.

These bronze scallywags split opinion: some find them dead set creepy, others find them a playful addition to a zone of the CBD that’s all about banks, business suits and boutiques. Needless to say, we’re in the latter camp. That said, the scale of the figures – their features, age and size don’t quite tally – giving them an otherworldy quality. British born Sydney-based artist Caroline Rothwell originally produced ‘The Youngsters’ for a temporary public art project in the surrounding laneways, but the City of Sydney subsequently acquired them for permanent spots. Look inside the hoods and clothes – they’re coated with quartz and coal, a subtle comment on our mineral economy.

This installation by Sydney artist Mikala Dwyer reclaims space for women and queer people threatened by homophobic violence; specifically, it reclaims a site where an act of violence occurred 14 years earlier. Now a pink lamp lights the laneway (which runs alongside the Beresford Hotel) and a ribbon of text runs along the wall. Developed by poet and anthropology professor Michael Taussig in consultation with members of the local community, it reads: “This is a lane with a name and a lamp in memory of the woman who survived being beaten and raped here. She happened to be lesbian. When the sun sets this lamp keeps vigil along with you who read this in silent meditation.”

When tickets went on sale in September for Yayoi Kusama’s Broad Museum show in Los Angeles, it’s estimated that 150,000 people joined the digital queue to buy tickets within the first five minutes; 50,000 of those managed to get a ticket – and the show sold out in an hour. The reason? The exhibition featured six of the artist’s Insta-famous ‘infinity mirror rooms’. Australians can cop a squiz at three of Kusama’s perception-bending installations this summer, if they can get themselves to Brisbane – where Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art just opened their career survey Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of a Rainbow (co-presented with the National Gallery of Singapore, where the show opened in June).   Installation view of Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow – Queensland Gallery of Modern Art Photograph: Natasha Harth     Coming six years after their solo show Look Now See Forever, which featured recent work, Life Is the Heart of a Rainbow looks back at almost five decades of the 88-year-old artist’s practice, starting with early paintings made as a young woman in post-war Japan, and spanning to recent soft sculptures, mirror-room installations and paintings. Visual motifs of dots, pumpkins and nets prevail across the show, revealed as ongoing obsessions for the artist. As the Broad Museum queues attest, Kusama is one of the most famous artists in the world these days, but that superstardom is relatively recent – and many of her Insta-fans will be surprised to learn

When tickets went on sale in September for Yayoi Kusama’s Broad Museum show in Los Angeles, it’s estimated that 150,000 people joined the digital queue to buy tickets within the first five minutes; 50,000 of those managed to get a ticket – and the show sold out in an hour. The reason? The exhibition featured six of the artist’s Insta-famous ‘infinity mirror rooms’. Australians can cop a squiz at three of Kusama’s perception-bending installations this summer, if they can get themselves to Brisbane – where Queensland’s Gallery of Modern Art just opened their career survey Yayoi Kusama: Life Is the Heart of a Rainbow (co-presented with the National Gallery of Singapore, where the show opened in June).   Installation view of Yayoi Kusama: Life is the Heart of a Rainbow – Queensland Gallery of Modern Art Photograph: Natasha Harth     Coming six years after their solo show Look Now See Forever, which featured recent work, Life Is the Heart of a Rainbow looks back at almost five decades of the 88-year-old artist’s practice, starting with early paintings made as a young woman in post-war Japan, and spanning to recent soft sculptures, mirror-room installations and paintings. Visual motifs of dots, pumpkins and nets prevail across the show, revealed as ongoing obsessions for the artist. As the Broad Museum queues attest, Kusama is one of the most famous artists in the world these days, but that superstardom is relatively recent – and many of her Insta-fans will be surprised to learn

Unless you have a degree in art history, one exhibition of pre-19th-century paintings can look much like the next. So we talked to Pieter Roelofs, curator at Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, to get a greater sense of the Art Gallery of NSW’s summer blockbuster Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age: masterpieces from the Rijksmuseum – one masterpiece at a time.   1. This is arguably the most interesting painting in the exhibition   Aelbert Cuyp 'A senior merchant of the Dutch East India the fleet in the roads of Batavia' (1640–60) Image courtesy Rijksmuseum     Little did painter Aelbert Cuyp know that this portrait would come to represent the dark heart of the Dutch ‘golden age’ – the fact: that the wealth that allowed art in that area to flourish was based on trade (including the slave trade) and colonisation and cheap/unpaid labour. Here we see an unknown Dutch merchant and his wife, and an Indonesian man who is presumably his slave, against a backdrop of the Dutch colony of Batavia (modern-day Jakarta). The merchant is pointing at a fleet of ships, indicating that at least one of these is his. This is one of the few paintings in Rembrandt and the Dutch Golden Age that bear witness to slavery, and Rijksmuseum curator Pieter Roelofs says that a painting like this makes contemporary Dutch audiences uncomfortable: “[Slavery] is something we as a country are not proud of.” The Rijksmuseum is, in fact, currently organising an exhibition on the topic of slavery. “We really believe that we

For their blockbuster summer show, the Museum of Contemporary Art have given over their third floor to Swiss video and installation artist Pipilotti Rist, for the immersive exhibition Sip My Ocean, curated by Natasha Bullock.   Pipilotti Rist Photograph: Daniel Boud/MCA     To spend time in Sip My Ocean is to forget the institution around you, and to enter a wonderland of supersized nature and vivid colour, in which inanimate surfaces are transmogrified by projections. A sofa becomes an ocean swell; a wall becomes a horizon; a ceiling becomes the surface of a pond. You feel your frequency adjusting downwards, your shoulders relaxing, your face forming a smile. Simple things like the artist's invitation to sit (or even lie down) and look up at giant visuals, immediately put one in a childlike position; openness is almost an automatic response. One suspects that Rist would be quite happy for viewers to encounter the exhibition in a similarly childlike state of ignorance – to take the works as they find them, on face value. But if you want to dig deeper, here's our guide to five must-see works in Sip My Ocean. 1. ‘Sip My Ocean’ (1996)   Still from Pipilotti Rist 'Sip My Ocean' (1996) two-channel video installation Image: Courtesy the artist, Hauser & Wirth and Luhring Augustine © the artist     One of the first works you encounter, this two-channel ‘wall video’ seduces you with kaleidoscopic images of an underwater coralscape and bikini-clad female figures, to the sounds of 

For his latest work, Sydney performer and artist Justin Shoulder will embody a ‘fantastic creature’ inspired by a microscopic animal called the ‘Tardigrade’, which was discovered by Johann Goetz in 1773. “It’s one of the only organisms that can survive anything – extreme heat, extreme cold,” says the performer. “You can’t kill it.” This ‘Tardigrade’ is one figure on a spectrum of transformation that unspools in Shoulder’s one-man sci-fi show, Carrion, premiering at Carriageworks this week as part of Performance Space’s Liveworks Festival. Set in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, the show is part installation and part dance work, and is a “reflection on evolution, and the possibilities of adaptation and survival,” says Shoulder. It opens on a figure that has survived everything; “then I become human, machine, animal – and then this combination of all those things.”     Carrion – by Liz Ham, Tristan Jalleh and Justin Shoulder Photograph: Supplied     Shoulder has been making Fantastic Creatures, colourful avatars consisting of full-body costumes that he ‘performs’ in, for ten years now. His first, Caenus Cerabrallus, debuted at the now-defunct warehouse space Lanfranchi’s in 2007 – and since then new incarnations have popped up at queer club nights (such as the also-defunct Club Kooky) and festivals (including Underbelly Arts Festival).   Justin Shoulder – Caenus Cerabrallus Photograph: Mat Hornby     The origin of Carrion was a performance Shoulder did at Pink Bubble, a

When they announced their inaugural Adelaide Festival program in 2017, incoming artistic directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy staked their claim on a niche that currently no-one else is taking up: presenting the big auteurist theatrical works that are making Europe swoon (witness: Barrie Kosky’s Saul, and Thomas Ostermeier’s Richard III). They’re doing it again in 2018, with top billing going to Armfield’s acclaimed Glyndebourne Festival production of Brett Dean’s opera Hamlet, and Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s epic Shakespeare compendium Kings of War, directed by in-demand Dutch director Ivo van Hove. Completing the hat trick of Big Name Talent is Robert LePage’s world-beating hit of 2000, The Far Side of the Moon (which was a hit at Sydney Festival 2001, but closed unseasonably early due to a stage malfunction). Armfield and Healy are also continuing their 2017 commitment to extend the shelf-life of what they deem ‘important’ Australian works; in 2017 that was Armfield’s own production of The Secret River, which took on a new life in a quarry. In 2018 they will revive two notable Australian works; Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Bennelong (which showed in Sydney and Melbourne in 2017), and Belvoir’s 2010 production of Thyestes, by Simon Stone (who is now much in demand in London and Europe). Whatever Armfield and Healy are doing, it’s working on a couple of levels: in 2017, they announced the biggest box office takings in the festival’s 57-year history; and just this week it wa

When they announced their inaugural Adelaide Festival program in 2017, incoming artistic directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy staked their claim on a niche that currently no-one else is taking up: presenting the big auteurist theatrical works that are making Europe swoon (witness: Barrie Kosky’s Saul, and Thomas Ostermeier’s Richard III). They’re doing it again in 2018, with top billing going to Armfield’s acclaimed Glyndebourne Festival production of Brett Dean’s opera Hamlet, and Toneelgroep Amsterdam’s epic Shakespeare compendium Kings of War, directed by in-demand Dutch director Ivo van Hove. Completing the hat trick of Big Name Talent is Robert LePage’s world-beating hit of 2000, The Far Side of the Moon (which was a hit at Sydney Festival 2001, but closed unseasonably early due to a stage malfunction). Armfield and Healy are also continuing their 2017 commitment to extend the shelf-life of what they deem ‘important’ Australian works; in 2017 that was Armfield’s own production of The Secret River, which took on a new life in a quarry. In 2018 they will revive two notable Australian works; Bangarra Dance Theatre’s Bennelong (which showed in Sydney and Melbourne in 2017), and Belvoir’s 2010 production of Thyestes, by Simon Stone (who is now much in demand in London and Europe). Whatever Armfield and Healy are doing, it’s working on a couple of levels: in 2017, they announced the biggest box office takings in the festival’s 57-year history; and just this week it wa

John Kaldor has been helping international artists transform Sydney since Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the coast of Little Bay in 1969. In 2016, he and his team made it possible for Sydney artist Jonathan Jones to take-over part of the Royal Botanic Gardens with his ambitious public art project barrangal dyara. The latest Kaldor Public Art Project – the 33rd – is currently in residence at Sydney’s Observatory Hill, where French-Albanian artist Anri Sala has taken over the 105-year-old rotunda with the world premiere of a new public art installation inspired by Sydney’s colonial history.  Here's a quick guide to get you across the who, what, why and how of Kaldor Public Art Project 33: The Last Resort. The artwork: ‘The Last Resort’ is an audio-visual installation comprised of 38 snare drums, suspended from the roof of the Observatory Hill rotunda with mirrored surfaces facing down, from which an altered version of the second movement of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major (K. 622) plays via twin sets of small speakers (contained within the drums). The score plays for about 58 minutes, then begins its loop again. The artist: Anri Sala, the subject of a major career survey at New York’s New Museum in 2016,  is best known for works that engage with social and political histories. For the last 15 or so years, he’s been increasingly interested in music and sound as psychologically charged mediums for evoking and reinterpreting the past; for example, his 2013 Venice Biennal

John Kaldor has been helping international artists transform Sydney since Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the coast of Little Bay in 1969. In 2016, he and his team made it possible for Sydney artist Jonathan Jones to take-over part of the Royal Botanic Gardens with his ambitious public art project barrangal dyara. Next up, Kaldor Public Art Projects has set its sights on Sydney’s Observatory Hill, where Berlin based Albanian artist Anri Sala will be taking over the 105-year-old Rotunda with the world premiere of a new public art project inspired by the site and by Sydney’s colonial history. The subject of a major career survey at New York’s New Museum in 2016, Sala is best known for works that engage with social and political histories. For the last 15-or-so years, he’s been increasingly interested in music and sound as psychologically-charged mediums for evoking and reinterpreting the past.   Anri Sala, 2013 Photograph: Marc Domage     From a distance, Kaldor Public Art Project 33 will look like business as usual; as you approach the Rotunda on Observatory Hill, however, you’ll hear the difference: orchestral music, and the sound of 38 snare drums. Suspended from the ceiling of the pavilion, with reflective mirror skins facing down, the snares will tap out an altered version of Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major, in sync with a recorded track. A site visit in 2012 inspired Sala’s project, titled The Last Resort. The artist became fascinated with the history of Dawes P

Update: tickets are now on sale for the Melbourne season of The Wizard of Oz via Ticketmaster. Click your heels together: Andrew Lloyd Webber’s London Palladium production of The Wizard of Oz is coming to the Regent Theatre in May 2018, thanks to mega-producer John Frost. Based on the 1939 film, but with added songs by powerhouse team Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber (whose best-know collabs include Evita and Jesus Christ Superstar), this production (directed by Jeremy Sams) premiered at London's Palladium Theatre in 2011. In their 4-star review, Time Out London described it as "a spectacle worthy of the Palladium's heyday. Visually, this stage remake of MGM's 1939 special effects blockbuster is 'Over the Rainbow' and accelerating."     The UK Company of The Wizard of Oz performing 'Merry Old Land of Oz' Photograph: Daniel A. Swalec     The local iteration will star Australian veteran Anthony Warlow (who knocked our socks off in Fiddler on the Roof last year) as the Wizard, and a special double bill of Wicked alumni: Lucy Durack as Glinda the Good and Jemma Rix as the Wicked Witch of the West. Samantha Dodemaide will play Dorothy, her first leading role in a major musical. The Wizard of Oz will open in Brisbane in November 2017 ahead of Sydney, where it previews from December 31 – before landing in Melbourne in May 2018. Tickets are now on sale for the Melbourne season. See what else is currently on stage and coming up in musical theatre in Melbourne.

Tonight in a courtroom in Melbourne, Hamlet Prince of Denmark goes on trial for the murder of his ex-girlfriend’s father, Polonius. At the end of a long evening of arguments from the prosecution and defence legal teams, evidence from a forensic pathologist, and deliberations by a jury of his peers, he will be found guilty or acquitted. This scenario has such an earnest, academic flush to it, you might imagine it to be a ‘moot’ for the University of Melbourne law school, or a exercise for VCE drama students. Except that the lawyers are real lawyers (not students) and the judge is a real judge. The only ‘actors’ are the people playing Hamlet, and witnesses Ophelia and Gertrude. Please, Continue (Hamlet) (playing at Melbourne Festival this week) is the work of theatre-makers Yan Duyvendak and Roger Bernat, and has played in 12 countries around the world since its 2011 premiere in Switzerland (where Duyvendak is based, alternating with France). In each place the show is produced, real judges, barristers and legal teams duke out the case in a real courtroom, and according to the legal system of their country. And once the legal teams have made their final arguments, a jury of 12 is selected from among the audience members, and is given 20 minutes to come to a decision: to acquit or not to acquit (that is the question).   The Hon Professor George Hampel AM QC (judge), judges associate Grant Lubofsky, and Prosecution lawyer John Champion SC Photograph: Jim Lee     Duyvendak comes

Imagine a cross between the Biennale, Laneway Festival and a backstage tour, and you’ve kinda got Underbelly Arts Lab and Festival. The sixth edition of Underbelly Arts is taking place this week – and we’ve got four reasons (well, at least four) you should check it out: 1. Celebrate a queer gothic wedding With marriage equality still up for debate, this might just be the only wedding you want to attend in the coming months – well, sort-of wedding: artists Eugene Choi and Marcus Whale are being a bit playful when they describe their choral performance Praise! as a “platonic gay gothic wedding”. But they will be undergoing a ceremony together, while wearing white floor-length dresses. Choi and Whale, friends and previous collaborators, both grew up in religious environments (for her the Pentecostal church, for him the Catholic), and Praise! blends Whale’s compositions and Choi’s monolithic, industrial sculptures to respond to that heritage and explore Christian ritual. The two will perform within a large structure made from steel scaffolding beams, accompanied by local amateur choir Polyphony (led by singer-songwriter Jack Colwell). “I’ve known Eugene for a very long time, and have always loved her work – the sort of brutalism and grandness of her steel scaffold works,” says Whale. “I thought it would be interesting to have this sort of monolithic choral music around this monolithic structure.” The title track, ‘Praise’, was composed specially for Polyphony earlier this year, a