Recent ABR Arts reviews:

• Bottomless (fortyfivedownstairs) ★★★
• Artaserse (Pinchgut Opera) ★★★★
• Daniel Barenboim conducting Staatskapelle Berlin (Sydney Opera House) ★★★★½
• Patricia Piccinini and Joy Hester, Through Love (TarraWarra Museum of Art)
• Lean On Pete ★★★1/2

Giveaways

• Two double-pass tickets to Patricia Piccinini and Joy Hester, Through Love … showing at the TarraWarra Museum of Art (24 November 2018 to 11 March 2019).
• Two double-pass tickets to the performances An Evening with Sara Macliver (January 5) and Twilight Jazz: Hoodangers (January 7). Both are part of the Peninsula Summer Music Festival 2019, running 1–13 January 2019.

See below on how to win the free tickets.

Coming up in ABR Arts?

There’s plenty of quality ahead in ABR Arts.
• Sophie Knezic reviews Escher X nendo: Between Two Worlds
• Keren Hammerschlag reviews Love + Desire: Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate
• Anwen Crawford reviews Paweł Pawlikowski's new film Cold War

Patricia Piccinini and Joy Hester exhibition

Patricia Piccinini, The Young Family, 2002. Silicone, fibreglass, leather, human hair, plywood, 85 x 150 x 120 cm approx. Bendigo Art Gallery, Victoria RHS Abbott Bequest Fund, 2003 (Courtesy the artist , Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne and Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney)

Patricia Piccinini & Joy Hester: Through love … is currently on display at the TarraWarra Museum of Art until 11 March 2019. It features more than fifty works spanning the two artists, including a major new sculpture by Patricia Piccinini and celebrated works by Joy Hester. Curated by Victoria Lynn, the works of Piccinini and Hester evoke the breadth of human relations, care, and emotions. Melbourne-based artist Piccinini is best known for her vividly realistic sculptures of imagined hybrid creatures, often combining animal figures with human-like faces. Joy Hester, a major contributor to the development of Australian modernism, was a member of the Angry Penguins, a literary and artistic avant-garde movement of the 1940s.

Fiona Gruber has reviewed the exhibition for Australian Book Review, found here.

ABR is offering two double passes to Patricia Piccinini & Joy Hester: Through love …
For information about the exhibition, click here. See the giveaway section below for details on how to win.

Peninsula Summer Music Festival 2019

The program for the revamped 2019 Peninsula Summer Music Festival has been announced. A rich display of music, wine, and food will be available across the Mornington Peninsula. The artistic director for the festival is acclaimed oboist Ben Opie, who has brought together a litany of musicians including: the Victorian première of the Australian Haydn Ensemble performing an all-Mozart program; Marshall McGuire (harp) and Sara Macliver (Soprano) performing the works of Handel, Mozart, Ravel, and Purcell; cellist Stephanie Arnold collaborating with local Indigenous artists in the Whistlewood Art Gallery for Song & Story; and Bach and Bathe in the Peninsula Hot Springs, featuring a dip while listening to Bach or electronic, string, and instrumental soundscapes.

The Peninsula Summer Music Festival 2019 runs from 1–13 January 2019. For more information, visit the festival website.

ABR is delighted to offer two double-pass tickets to An Evening with Sara Macliver on January 5 at St John’s Church, and also to Twilight Jazz: Hoodangers on January 7 at the Montalto Vineyard – both part of the Peninsula Summer Music Festival 2019. See the giveaway section below for details.

$35,000 Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize open for entry

The Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, which aims to promote opportunities for Australian female-identifying artists, is now open for applications. The Art Prize will offer a Professional Art Prize worth $35,000 to a single entrant, qualifying it as the most valuable art award for women in Australia. The Art Prize will also offer a $5,000 Emerging Art Prize.

For more information on the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, visit their website.

Margaret Atwood writing sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood (photograph via Wikimedia Commons)

Margaret Atwood, acclaimed author of The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), has announced she is writing a sequel entitled The Testaments. The new novel will be set fifteen years after the end of The Handmaid’s Tale, and will be narrated by three female characters. The Handmaid’s Tale, set in the dystopian patriarchal society of Gilead, has gained international notoriety recently thanks to the Emmy-winning television series of the same name starring Elisabeth Moss as Offred. The Testaments will be released sometime September 2019, according to the novelist.

The Testaments is will be released sometime in September 2019, according to the novelist.

Pussy Riot performing at Adelaide Fringe Festival

Seven members of the collective Pussy Riot (photograph by Igor Mukhin/Wikimedia Commons)

The acclaimed controversial Russian punk protest band Pussy Riot are performing their first Australian show as the headline act for the Adelaide Fringe Festival. With two other members of Pussy Riot, Masha (Maria) Alyokhina, the leading member of the band, will give a stage performance as well as an art piece Riot Days at the Royal Croquet Club's The Attic venue from February 27 to March 3 2019. Pussy Riot came to international prominence after a performance inside Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour on 21 February 2012, after which three of the groups members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina, and Yekaterina Samutsevich, were arrested by Putin’s henchmen.

Giveaways!

Patricia Piccinini & Joy Hester: Through love …

Thanks to the TarraWarra Museum of Art, two subscribers will win a double-pass to Patricia Piccinini and Joy Hester, Through Love … showing (24 November 2018 to 11 March 2019).

An Evening with Sara Macliver and Twilight Jazz: Hoodangers (Peninsula Summer Music Festival 2019)

Thanks to the Peninsula Summer Music Festival, two subscribers will win a double pass to the performances An Evening with Sara Macliver (January 5) and Twilight Jazz: Hoodangers (January 7). Both are part of the Festival, running 1–13 January 2019.

How to enter: To be in the running please email Grace Chang at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your full name and contact details. Preference is given to subscribers who have not received a giveaway in recent months. To be eligible for these giveaways, you must be a current or new paid subscriber to the print edition of ABR or to ABR Online.