CULTURE: Arts Masterpieces
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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CULTURE
Poetry Masterpiece: Jennifer Maiden - 'Friendly Fire', 2005
Lisa Gorton
Jennifer Maiden’s fourteenth poetry collection is a masterpiece in the original sense of that word: fantastical, intelligent, unassuming...
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CULTURE
Fiction Masterpiece: JM Coetzee - 'Summertime', 2009
Geordie Williamson
Is it a cheat to suggest this quasi-memoir by a South African–born Nobel Prize winner as the best work of Australian fiction since the dawn...
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CULTURE
Opera Masterpiece: Neil Armfield - 'Peter Grimes', 2009
Peter McCallum
When Opera Australia staged Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes in 2009 (co-produced with Western Australian Opera and Houston Grand Opera),...
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CULTURE
Jazz Masterpiece: Ten Part Invention - 'Unidentified Spaces', 2001
John Clare
Ten Part Invention is a Sydney band formed more than 20 years ago to perform Australian jazz music. It still has a solid, often ecstatic,...
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CULTURE
Classical Masterpiece: James Ledger - 'Chronicles', 2009
Andrew Ford
It has been a good start to the twenty-first century for Australian composers and correspondingly hard to pick a single masterpiece. Anyway...
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CULTURE
Popular Music Masterpiece: Sarah Blasko - 'As Day Follows Night', 2009
Robert Forster
Bookended by two wispy Disney-esque ballads, As Day Follows Night has as its body, and certainly its heart, ten beautiful songs. Their...
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CULTURE
Stand-Up Comedy Masterpiece: Justin Hamilton - 'Circular', 2011
Tim Ferguson
Justin Hamilton is the stand-up comedian of the decade. His latest one-man show Circular is the masterpiece towards which this most dynamic...
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CULTURE
Music Theatre Masterpiece: An Australian–Indonesian production - 'The Theft of Sita', 2000
Robyn Archer
In The Theft of Sita, the roles undertaken by its two instigating creators – Nigel Jamieson shaped the work as dramaturge and director;...
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CULTURE
Television Masterpiece: Chris Lilley - 'Summer Heights High', 2007
Marieke Hardy
Note perfect, Summer Heights High searingly captures a slice of Australia’s psyche without mockery or judgement. It provides a sublime...
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CULTURE
Film Masterpiece: Rolf de Heer - 'The Tracker', 2002
Adrian Martin
Australian cinema is prone to chronic understatement – shrinking away from opportunities for sex, violence and catharsis. The Tracker is an...
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CULTURE
Design Masterpiece: Marc Newson - 'Qantas A380 Economy Seat', 2008
Alan Saunders
Most designers like to design a chair or two in their career. Marc Newson began his with the famous Lockheed Lounge in 1986 and went on to...
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CULTURE
Architecture Masterpiece: Lindsay & Kerry Clare - 'Gallery of Modern Art', Queensland, 2006
Nowadays ‘masterpiece’ refers to a work of extraordinary artistic merit. But it once described a work by a craftsman made specifically to...
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CULTURE
Visual Art (Two-Dimensional) Masterpiece: Brian Blanchflower - 'Canopy LI (Scelsi I–IV)', 2001
Anthony Bond
Brian Blanchflower is one of the most important painters in the world today and yet he is largely overlooked outside his native Perth. His...
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CULTURE
Visual Art (Three-Dimensional) Masterpiece: Hany Armanious & Mary Teague - 'Lines of Communication', 2010
Doug Hall
Quietly installed in the old North Sydney Telephone Exchange – now a newly developed commercial building – in Mount Street, North Sydney,...
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CULTURE
Performance Art Masterpiece: Mike Parr - 'Close the Concentration Camps', 2002
Anne Marsh
A man sits slumped in a chair; he wears a black suit, white shirt and no tie. His right trouser leg is ripped across the thigh revealing...
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CULTURE
Video Art Masterpiece: Shaun Gladwell - 'Storm Sequence', 2000
Juliana Engberg
Iconic, mesmerising, atmospheric and in a zone of its own, Storm Sequence is compelling in its use of place, pace and proposition. As the...
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CULTURE
Ballet Masterpiece: Graeme Murphy - 'Swan Lake', 2002
Jill Sykes
Like Shakespeare’s plays, great ballets get their makeovers by the score all over the world – except that Shakespeare’s words are (mostly)...
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CULTURE
Theatre Masterpiece: Tom Wright & Benedict Andrews - 'The War of the Roses', 2009
Alison Croggon
'Masterpiece’ is a chilly word: it takes a work out of the flux of creation and pins it in the gallery of cultural regard. When speaking of...
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CULTURE
Fashion Masterpiece: Romance Was Born - ‘The Oracle’, 2011
Clare Press
‘The Oracle’, the fifth major show by two Sydney-based iconoclasts, initially had Australian Vogue decrying the absence of the “madcap prop...
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