Arts and Sport
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The counter-revolution that AFL needs
This weekend’s AFL Grand Final is only the seventh time that the finals series hasn’t included one of the great four: Carlton, Collingwood Richmond and Hawthorn since 1925. Continue reading »
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The documentary trying to build a democracy movement in Australia
In an entertaining, new documentary, Craig Reucassel is working with the Australian Democracy Network in trying to help build a healthy democracy that is more fair, balanced, accountable and participatory. Continue reading »
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Children of Coal: my mother’s story
Judith White grew up in the north of England when it still ran on coal. Her new memoir has her mother Joan at its centre. Continue reading »
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Doing the heavy lifting: Australians’ obsession with a metaphor
The Americans have been doing metaphorical heavy lifting since the 1930s. Before that heavy lifting was something done by people, such as wharfies or weight lifters, or machines, such as cranes. Continue reading »
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Summer games in Tokyo – the Paralympics
The current Paralympic Games are being carried out in the context of the dual crises facing Japan. Continue reading »
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Resilience via poetry, a South Sudanese story
Behind the stay-at-home Covid restrictions, the mental health of thousands is threatened. Cries for help multiply. To virus induced threats, including isolation if schools and universities stay closed, migrants must also deal with the trauma of past events plus the stigma of not always feeling accepted in a new country. Like Achol Arop. Continue reading »
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Paper, web-page, rock
We are madly digitising all the published materials we can get our hands on, but technophile Geoff Ebbs has an insight into the ephemeral nature of our digital obsession. Continue reading »
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White privilege in sport runs deep, including the Olympics.
Racist abuse experienced by Black England players is the tip of the iceberg and our response must go deeper and wider and shine a light on white privilege, in the global sports industry. Continue reading »
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Has the lesson of Guernica been forgotten?
Eighty four years ago, the much loved Spanish artist Pablo Picasso made a statement about war through a mural called Guernica named after the Basque town that bore that name. Have we forgotten his message? Continue reading »
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I weep for India, and those left behind
I will never again see India in the same light, once a place of excitement, vibrancy and opportunity. Its people are hurting at depths we will never understand. In my heart I may never forgive myself for what I’ve done. Continue reading »
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Standard piano keys are too wide for too many. But alternatively sized keyboards are on the way.
The piano is the instrument most preferred by music students. It is often the instrument of their dreams: playing beautiful music perfectly and displaying extraordinary pianistic athleticism. However, the conventional keyboard – with its fixed key width – is unsuitable for many, dooming them to a future of unmet hopes. We can’t change our hands Continue reading »
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Take a closer look – the art galleries among victims of the pandemic
There are many things so many of us have missed during lockdowns that it is difficult to make a list – or even start to develop one in ranked order – even though there has been plenty of time to think about it. Continue reading »
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Rewriting the creation myth of Blue Poles as it approaches 70
Blue Poles didn’t just come out of the blue – or the bottle – for Jackson Pollock, contrary to the ‘creation myths’ that grew up when the NGA paid the then jaw-dropping sum of US$2.1 million for the work. It was at least five years in gestation. Continue reading »
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Sidney Nolan’s St Kilda paintings: the ‘innocence’ of a man in his 20s with a wife and two mistresses
The Canberra Museum+Gallery is exhibiting several of Sidney Nolan’s St Kilda paintings until March 30, complete with a Children’s Trail for the nippers. But are the paintings as innocent as the stories that have built up around them – curated by Nolan himself – suggest? Continue reading »
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Tokyo 2020: The Troubled Games of the XXXll Olympiad
On 25 March, the Olympic Torch Relay is to set out from Fukushima with its “sacred flame” on a national circuit, visiting all 47 prefectures and arriving at Tokyo’s Games venue for the opening ceremony on 23 July. But will this scenario really play out? Continue reading »
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Line between sledging and racism continues to blur
An invidious Sydney tradition surfaced again at the third Test match between Australia and India last week, with six spectators ejected from a stand for allegedly racist chants towards a nearby Indian outfielder. Continue reading »
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Strung out on centre court: the loneliness of the long distance tennis player
January has long been the month when the international circuit wends its way to Australia, with the Australian Open a key event on the calendar. While Covid-19 delayed the Grand Slam until early next month, January remains a bittersweet time for me. I can’t help but reflect on my professional tennis career. But while I Continue reading »
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Whose Kangaroo Was It Anyway?
Q. When are a kangaroo and a dingo worth ten million dollars? A. When they were painted by Britain’s premier equestrian painter, George Stubbs, from stuffed pelts brought back from Botany Bay by Sir Joseph Banks in 1770. Continue reading »
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The war reparations of Sidney Nolan and Benjamin Britten – reckless innocence?
Was the Anglo-Australian cultural cringe solely a one way transmission from settler colony to metropole mothership? I have been re-examining the possibility that Australian creatives might have influenced British culture over the past century, especially since the Second World War. Continue reading »
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Lady Chatterley and Alexander Portnoy: Narrowing the Limits of Censorship in Australia
On the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial in London it still is not clear why Allen Lane and his fellow Directors at Penguin felt able to print 200,000 copies of the book prior to the trial which they had been clearly warned would result. But they gambled and they Continue reading »
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The Conundrum of the London Kangaroos
Seven years ago the UK government overruled the purchase for $10,000,000 by the Australian government of two oil paintings of a dingo and a kangaroo painted in London by George Stubbs from stuffed pelts brought back from the coast of Australia in 1771 by Sir Joseph Banks. But there are two more paintings of kangaroos Continue reading »
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Six Ways Sacked Hacks Can Keep Keyboarding
If airline pilots grounded by Covid-19 can retrain as header drivers to reap this year’s harvest, sacked political journalists can keep supplying readers’ needs through a little retraining. Continue reading »
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Greg Sheridan’s feverish cherry picking
What has Greg Sheridan of The Australian been smoking or taking, or is it just common or garden cherry picking? Continue reading »
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Night and Day (NYBooks Aug 26, 2020)
But a broken nation is not a macrocosm of a broken family. It cannot be healed by love and understanding alone, by religious faith and “small acts of kindness.” Continue reading »
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Australia’s needs to stand up for the arts
Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Coalition Government has been widely criticised for its failure to support the arts in the COVID-19 crisis. The PM has responded with a handful of PR announcements. But what’s needed is a complete change of policy direction. Continue reading »
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D.H.Lawrence’s Australian Climacteric
The Obscene Publications Act was promulgated in England and Wales on August 29, 1959. It paved the way for the Lady Chatterley’s Lover trial in October 1960 that cleared Penguin Books of publishing an obscene article without literary merit even though the plot revolved around a sexual act that was felonious for heterosexual couples. Reading Continue reading »
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Heritage, justice and the future of culture
A crucial debate is taking place over the function of cultural institutions. The concerns of a rising generation about race, gender and historical justice have to be heard. But it’s equally important to defend heritage collections and the cultural achievements of the past. Continue reading »
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The erosion of The Age is like the erosion of society
Following its new owners excessive devotion to “entertainment news”, The Age has hit on a new recipe: curated stories to feed closed minds. Continue reading »
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Why do LNP Governments hate the arts and universities?
LNP Governments’ vindictive attitudes to the arts are obvious from the widespread cutbacks they have imposed on the sector. Ditto universities which have been forced to rely on overseas students to make up funding shortfalls and are then attacked for doing so. Continue reading »