
NGV Triennial 2020
With a mix of eye-catching works, the second NGV Triennial blends the avant-garde with the populistJuly 2015
Arts & Letters
Playing cricket at Wheatlands
An on-drive to the boundary the ball
going on and on through dust and dirt
on and on past the shed all the way past
the chook pen and on bouncing over
bark flaked and fallen from wandoos
and on over dried twigs and branches
and chunks of quartz – rose, milky –
on and on under the loosely strung fence
on and on over the dry ploughed ground
of the “new” pig yard on and on uphill
gathering speed against gravity perpetual
motion itself on and on over firebreaks
past pig melons the only green hugging
the ground in mid autumn still hot
and the blond sheen of old stubble
though behind the wicket some deeply
ploughed paddocks where brief rain
inspired prematurely and beyond
them the mysterious Needling Hills
with granites and roos and markings
telling stories of country deeper
than survey pegs but back to the ball
which rolls on and on right over
contour banks at a tangent to the house-
dam with its velvet-rippled-baked-
mud walls and murky shallow eye
courtesy of those brief rains and on
up into the Top Bush where nest-robbers
inspired anger and bewilderment and
a children’s story starring all of us –
especially my cousin Ian (wicketkeeping)
and cousin Ken (first slip) ready
to take the catch when I surprised them all
by driving the ball a bit on the up but still
on and on past the demon bowler
who was probably my brother Stephen
or my uncle Gerry – on and on scattering
a flock of pink and greys scrounging
for seed on and on past a pair of crows
eyeing off the body parts of small creatures
we can’t or won’t see and on and on
into the distant purple mountain
and through the setting sun and on
into night that will fall over all
our games fall on and beyond
the farm our field of play.
NGV Triennial 2020
With a mix of eye-catching works, the second NGV Triennial blends the avant-garde with the populistHealing story
Bangarra Dance Theatre’s ‘Spirit’ pays tribute to collaborators‘Jack’ by Marilynne Robinson
History and suffering matter in the latest instalment of the American author’s Gilead novels‘The Dry’ directed by Robert Connolly
Eric Bana stars as a troubled investigator dragged back to his home town in a sombre Australian thrillerLeaping Lefers
What’s next for the entrepreneurial Josh Lefers?Java drama
Favours and foreign affairs: Joko Widodo’s first year as Indonesian presidentCitizenship and its discontents
Talk of stripping citizenship is just one example of Tony Abbott’s alarmist rhetoricFallen angels
The children left behind by Australian sex tourists in the PhilippinesBlue is the colour
The idiosyncratic work of Yolngu artist Dhambit MununggurrDividing the Tasman: ‘Empire and the Making of Native Title’
Historian Bain Attwood examines the different approaches to sovereignty in the New Zealand and Australian settlementsShirley Hazzard’s wider world
The celebrated Australian author’s ‘Collected Stories’ sets private desperation in the cosmopolitan Europe she reveredCitizen plain: ‘Mank’
David Fincher’s biopic of Orson Welles’s collaborating writer favours technique over heartNGV Triennial 2020
With a mix of eye-catching works, the second NGV Triennial blends the avant-garde with the populistHealing story
Bangarra Dance Theatre’s ‘Spirit’ pays tribute to collaboratorsDeep cuts: ‘Small Axe’
Black solidarity is a palpable force throughout Steve McQueen’s five-film anthologyDistortion nation
Why are we more outraged by cheating cricketers than alleged war crimes in Afghanistan?
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