Arts & Letters
'The Mountain' by Drusilla Modjeska
Robyn Annear
It comes as a surprise to realise that The Mountain is Drusilla Modjeska’s first novel, since her writing – acclaimed and awarded as non-...
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CULTURE
A Cad and a Gentleman: Michael Winterbottom’s 'Trishna' and David and Stéphane Foenkinos' 'Delicacy'
Luke Davies
Michael Winterbottom, the British director, has made upwards of 20 feature films in little more than 25 years, as well as some...
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'The Weight of a Human Heart' by Ryan O’Neill
Karen Hitchcock
The 21 stories in Ryan O’Neill’s new collection are tied together by a preoccupation with language. There are books, magazines, word games...
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CULTURE
Truganini & George Augustus Robinson
By 1829, Truganini was running out of options. Her mother had been stabbed to death by a sailor, her uncle shot by a soldier, her mother-in...
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CULTURE
Bird-brained: Tim Birkhead’s 'Bird Sense: What It’s Like to Be a Bird'
Robyn Davidson
Had nature not evolved birds, would we dream of flight? Would we be sufficiently inspired by the dragonfly, the butterfly, the bee? No...
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CULTURE
Hurtling Stone: Meeting theatre director Simon Stone
Benjamin Law
If director–playwright Simon Stone were to write himself into one of his plays, his entrance would read: SIMON STONE, a scruffy man...
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CULTURE
Randy House: EL James’ 'Fifty Shades of Grey'
Malcolm Knox
When a new book series emerges from the swill of online fan fiction to sell 250,000 copies, dominate the New York Times e-book bestseller...
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'Save What You Can: The Day of The Triffids' by Bleddyn Butcher
John Kinsella
Since the broader recognition of Born Sandy Devotional as one of the great Australian albums, there have been several publications relating...
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CULTURE
Wave of Song: Jane Birkin’s world tour, 'Jane Birkin Sings Serge Gainsbourg'
Robert Forster
She speaks in English between songs and sings in French, pleasing the two largest nationalities of her public. Her English retains traces...
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MEDIA
'Wish You Were Here' by Kieran Darcy-Smith
Mandy Sayer
In cinema, no happy holiday can go unpunished. Wish You Were Here opens with a fast-paced prologue set in Cambodia, a riot of images and...
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CULTURE
A White Cube in a Black Box: Denton Corker Marshall’s design for Australia’s new Venice Biennale pavilion
Deyan Sudjic
Ask John Denton, of the architecture firm Denton Corker Marshall, which he likes best of the score or so of national pavilions that fill...
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CULTURE
A Port for the Soul: Aki Kaurismäki’s 'Le Havre'
Helen Garner
A watchman strolling late one night on the wharves of the French port of Le Havre raps his stick on the side of a container, and hears the...
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CULTURE
'The Hanging Garden' by Patrick White
Michelle de Kretser
The publication of an unfinished draft is the writer’s version of that nightmare in which you find yourself naked in the street. Writers...
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SOCIETY
High Priest: David Walsh and Tasmania’s Museum of Old and New Art
Amanda Lohrey
The Moorilla estate is set on a peninsula of sandstone cliffs that juts out into the Derwent estuary on Hobart’s northern fringe. Framed to...
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SOCIETY
On a Mission: John Strehlow’s 'The Tale of Frieda Keysser'
Peter Sutton
Among a right-thinking crowd you can still get a laugh with a missionary joke. At the 2008 conference of the Association of Social...
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MEDIA
As Robert Was Saying: In conversation with Robert Dessaix
Gail Bell
Robert Dessaix refers to the heart attack that almost ended his life in July 2011 as “the emergency”. “I’m not interested in the physical...
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CULTURE
Sydney Gets a Laneway: The Museum of Contemporary Art Australia
Drusilla Modjeska
Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art on Circular Quay West re-opened on 29 March with a new wing, as the Museum of Contemporary Art...
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CULTURE
Gough Whitlam & Enoch Powell
At the 1938 ceremony for the conferring of degrees in the Faculties of Arts and Law at the University of Sydney, the address was given by...
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CULTURE
Age of Innocence: Frank Moorhouse’s 'Cold Light'
David Marr
Edith Campbell Berry has crashed to earth in Canberra circa 1950. She is no longer wanted abroad. All her years at the League of Nations...
More ...20 Australian Masterpieces Since 2000
The Monthly
FASHION Romance Was Born ‘The Oracle’, 2011 ‘The Oracle’, the fifth major show by two Sydney-based iconoclasts, initially had...
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