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Arts

Film  |  Theatre  |  Art  |  Opera  |  Music  |  Television  |  Festivals

Welcome to ABR Arts, home to some of Australia's best arts journalism. We review film, theatre, opera, music, television, art exhibitions – and more. To read ABR Arts articles in full, subscribe to ABR or take out an ABR Arts subscription. Both packages give full access to our arts reviews the moment they are published online and to our extensive arts archive.

Meanwhile, the ABR Arts e-newsletter, published every second Tuesday, will keep you up-to-date as to our recent arts reviews.

 

Recent reviews

Andy Warhol and Photography: A Social Media

Art Gallery of South Australia
by •
14 March 2023
Oliviero Toscani, Andy Warhol, 1975, Public Engagement Fund 2021, Art Gallery of South Australia © Oliviero Toscani
Ask the average person what they picture when they hear the name ‘Andy Warhol’ and they will likely mention Campbell’s Soup Cans, Marilyn Monroe, or Elizabeth Taylor. The Art Gallery of South Australia’s exceptional new exhibition ‘Andy Warhol and Photography: A Social Media’ reminds us that such ubiquitous images of Pop Art are but one aspect of Warhol’s oeuvre. ... (read more)

Radical Utopia: An archeology of a creative city

RMIT Gallery
by •
14 March 2023
Prints by Carole Wilson, Arabic Women's Group (photograph by Tobias Titz)

Radical Utopia: An archeology of a creative city, curated by Harriet Edquist and Helen Stuckey, is a maximalist experience. Even the title itself is a little unwieldy.

... (read more)

Bernhardt/Hamlet 

Melbourne Theatre Company
by •
10 March 2023
L-R Charles Wu, Tim Walter, Kate Mulvany, John Leary (photograph by Pia Johnson)
More than a century ago, long before gender-blind casting became modish, the incomparable Sarah Bernhardt (1844–1923), a woman in her fifties, had the audacious idea that she would play Hamlet. Not only would she – scandalously – don breeches to do so, but she would also defy the critical consensus that Hamlet was a man in his early thirties. ... (read more)

Ngapa William Cooper 

Adelaide Festival
by •
09 March 2023
Lou Bennett and muscians performing at Ukaria (photographer Adam Forte)
For anyone who encountered Compassion, the profoundly moving and beautiful song cycle by Lior and Nigel Westlake from a decade ago, the prospect of hearing another work from them was always going to arouse interest. Would their newest collaboration rise to the same magical level as their first, or perhaps even surpass it? Would it be entirely different? ... (read more)

The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia? 

Sydney Theatre Company
by •
06 March 2023
Claudia Karvan, Mark Saturno and Nathan Page (photograph by Prudence Upton)
In a tastefully designed, beautifully arranged living room, a couple are engaging in the sort of mildly erotic verbal jousting in which long and happily married couples might indulge. They are Martin Gray, a Pritzker Prize-winning architect, just turned fifty, who has been chosen to design a futuristic, two-hundred-billion-dollar World City and his, in his words, bright, resourceful, intrepid wife, Stevie. ... (read more)

Macbeth 

Bell Shakespeare
by •
03 March 2023
Hazem Shammas as Macbeth and Jessica Tovey as Lady Macbeth (Photograph by Brett Boardman)
There is a moment often conveyed in romantic films (and it was certainly the case with Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet) when fresh eyes meet across a crowded room and become fixated, unable to stop ‘looking’, searching for more and more of the alchemical fire that triggered an intense magnetism. ... (read more)

A Deep Black Sleep 

IHOS
by •
28 February 2023
A Deep Black Sleep (photograph by Mona/Jesse Hunniford)
In 1990, composer and artistic director Konstantin Koukias and production director Werner Ihlenfeld founded IHOS Opera in Tasmania. Audiences were excited and astonished by the scale and ambition of the director’s vision when they attended his earlier, spectacular productions such as Days and Nights of Christ, To Traverse Water, and Tesla. ... (read more)

Sydney Modern

Art Gallery of New South Wales
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April 2023, no. 452
Art Gallery of New South Wales (photograph by Iwan Baan)
Nearly three months have passed since the new building at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) opened (3 December 2022). This summer, Sydney Modern, as the new North building by Japanese architectural firm SAANA is popularly known, has been Sydney’s main attraction and topic of conversation. ... (read more)

Zenith of Life 

Melbourne Symphony Orchestra
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28 February 2023
Siobhan Stagg and MSO (photograph by Laura Manariti)
The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra has a new sponsor – Ryman Healthcare. Perhaps inevitably, the gala concert that opened MSO’s 2023 season on Friday evening was titled ‘Zenith of Life’. Goodness knows we all need more healthcare – not to mention sponsors. ... (read more)

Aftersun 

Kismet
by •
21 February 2023
Calum (Paul Mescal) smiles across the dinner table at Sophie (Frankie Corio)

Not much appears to happen in Aftersun, the first feature film of young Scottish director Charlotte Wells – unless you count the snooker games, scuba diving, mud baths, and other holiday activities. But don’t be fooled. Like the water polo players in one of the many watery scenes, all the grunt work takes place below the surface. All you have to do, as spectator, is sit back and look for the clues.

... (read more)
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