Opinion | Australian Arts Review

Gough Whitlam, young people and public support for the arts

Gough Whitlam’s legacy in the arts first hit me as a little indie-music nerd in the 1990s. The inner-city Sydney band The Whitlams made a funny little music video about their namesake, a bloke who was part fairy-tale, pa...

Circus training instead of school sports? Now there’s an idea

October 20 - Circus, Opinion, Performance

What if social policy-makers knew how beneficial circuses were to the community? This was the provocation pitched to circus producers, trainers, performers and academics who met in the Melba Spiegeltent at the Circus Oz ...

Western Australian art is excluded from the national conversation

October 20 - Opinion, Visual Arts

Despite our interconnectedness through radio, television and the internet, the coverage of arts and cultural activities in Australia is viewed from a very close focus. This corrupts our understanding of the adjectives “A...

Measure for measure: the creative arts and the ‘impact agenda...

October 13 - Opinion

What use are Shakespeare’s plays? Back in the day, when my wife and I were dirt-poor arty types and lived in a hovel that declined the profligacy of doors, a two-volume hard-back edition of his collected works proved a h...

Shall we dance? Why Opera Australia staged The King and I

October 9 - Music Theatre, Opinion

Why is Opera Australia staging The King and I? The Rodgers and Hammerstein favourite is currently playing at the Sydney Opera House and has been a remarkably successful choice, commercially speaking. Even though reviewer...

Reading between the gender lines of children’s books

September 24 - Books, Opinion

As a bookseller, I frequently find myself in conversations with customers about “appropriateness” when choosing literature for young readers – and these often conflict with research I have encountered during my PhD on li...

Bennetts Lane closure strikes a bum note for Australian jazz

August 28 - Latest News, Music, Opinion

Last week’s announcement that Melbourne’s Bennetts Lane Jazz Club will close in nine months came as a shock to most in the Australian jazz community. Bennetts Lane has been a focal point for local jazz for more than two ...

A right to exist: Australia’s first Queer Arab Film Festival launches...

August 25 - Festivals, Film, Opinion

In a 2007 speech at Columbia University, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then president of Iran, famously proclaimed that there were no homosexuals in Iran. Despite the controversy that his words sparked, many Arabs and Muslims wou...