filmperformingOZ Film vs. OZ Audience
How many Australian films have been on your radar this year? Did Samson & Delilah’s win at Cannes pique your interest? What about the first Aboriginal comedy, Stone Bros? Surely... Read More »
musicRowland S. Howard
It’s a sad fact of life that we can’t all be Australian National Treasures like Rowland S. Howard. Sure, you can start a band – but it won’t be The... Read More »
musicGomez
Ambitious indie band Gomez and true global citizens of the world. Originally heralding from Southport, England, they now have members scattered over two continents from Brooklyn to Brighton. The boys... Read More »
Ongoing Events
performingBrick
Ah, the folly of youth.In 2005 Rian Johnson reinvented film noir with the critically acclaimed, cryptic high school tale Brick. Then earlier this year a high school drama teacher, Chris... Read More »
performingMissing the Bus to David Jones
Nursing homes can be haunted places, filled with cobwebbed memories and inhabitants perched between worlds here and gone. They are also places of joy, of old tales retold and new... Read More »
filmperformingAustralia's Silent Film Festival
Australia has an illustrious cinematic history. Indeed with The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) Australia arguably gave the world its first narrative feature. This and a dazzling collection of... Read More »
artfreeI Heart Kings Cross
It’s hard to do throw ups when you got no can control. Maybe it’s time to give up trying and join a knitting circle instead. Your nanna will be pleased.Guerilla... Read More »
filmInglourious Basterds
Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France. From the brilliant and bizarre mind of Quentin Tarantino comes the ultimate revenge fantasy. Like the title’s misspelling suggests, Inglourious Basterds takes no... Read More »
freemusicAfter Work Art
When Oxford Art Factory opened, Sydney breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, a music venue large enough to house international acts but not too showy to make locals feel out... Read More »
performingThe Bougainville Photoplay Project
I have a friend who will claim, every time he sees you, that "the craziest thing happened to me today". This sounds like it could be irritating, but it's not... Read More »
artfreeGabriella Mangano & Silvana Mangano: In The Stillness of Shadows
Twins. Freaky deaky twins. The Mangano Sisters are identical twins who draw. They make videos and performances about the nature of drawing and their relationship to each other. It would... Read More »
artfreemusicperformingCrave
Crave: the festival's festival. An event created on behalf of the NSW government to draw dollars, jobs and foreign folk to our soil, Crave is a celebration of the artistic, culinary and... Read More »
performingplayPage 8
Page 8 is an autobiographical one-man show about growing up black and gay in 1970’s Australian suburbia. It could, potentially, be awful when you think about it. The "Growing-Up-Gay One-Man... Read More »
film(500) Days of Summer
This is not a love story. This is a story about love. From the opening (rather pointed) intertitles, this tagline is made abundantly clear. Debut feature film director Marc Webb... Read More »
filmVan Diemen's Land
Axes do not fall silently and men die neither quickly nor quietly; their life splutters out of them in a mixture of breath and blood. It may well be that... Read More »
artfreeShe went that way
A central theme to She went that way, the first major exhibition of Raquel Ormella’s work, currently showing at Artspace, is memory — personal and collective.An image like The Domain... Read More »
filmDepartures
Death and taxes are two certainties in life. Good cinema, unfortunately, is not — but leave it to the Japanese to make a film about death and everyday tragedies that... Read More »
filmfreePassion and Destiny: Romanticism in the cinema series
‘You gave me my first glimpse of a real life and then you ask me to carry on with a false one. No-one can endure that.’ - Newland Archer, The Age of... Read More »
artfreeMenagerie
Featuring a tiny wooden echidna with oversized quills and a Tasmanian Devil fashioned from patchwork Tassie sea kelp, this new exhibition of contemporary Indigenous animal sculpture is so much more... Read More »
filmStone Bros.
Touted as the first indigenous comedy film, Stone Bros. is an Aboriginal Australian road movie, replete with colourful characters and crazy situations. Writer/director Richard J. Frankland sticks cousins Eddie (Luke... Read More »
artfree°SOUTH:WAR
°SOUTH:WAR offers a sobering reflection of what war, in our day and age, has come to mean. Photographers Sean Flynn, Tim Page, Stephen Dupont, David Dare Parker, Jack Picone, Ben... Read More »
performingThe Taming of the Shrew
Mounting a production of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew is a brave move. Central to the plot is the eponymous shrew, Kate, and the process through which she is... Read More »
performingplayGod of Carnage
God of Carnage begins with two sets of parents sitting down in a modern Parisian apartment to discuss a fight that occurred between their children. What starts out as quite... Read More »
artfilmmusicperformingCabinet
Nowadays, in the 21st century where everyone works in New Media sitting on laptops in cafes smugly sending each other Kanye memes via bluetooth, the threat of an impending Monday... Read More »
filmAstro Boy
The nostalgia value of Astro Boy alone is sure to see crowds beating a path to the cinema. The antics of this pint sized action hero have been delighting comic... Read More »
filmMoon
Arduous employment, paranoia and fear of isolation are universal human experiences. In the grand tradition of social anxiety-steeped science fiction, Moon explores these experiences on a magnified scale: what if your... Read More »
artfreeReality Check: watching Sylvania Waters
Long before Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson graced our screens in Newlyweds; before The farmer wants a wife and the chaotic disaster of Britney and Kevin’s love life chronicled, there... Read More »
artfreeVideo Swell Sydney
Amongst all the fanfare of the opening of War and peaceand in between at the AGNSW, another showseems to have slipped quietly under the radar. It’s a shame really because... Read More »
filmMao's last dancer
Before China flung open its imposing red doors to an international market, it was very much the quiet kid in the corner with super strict parents who didn’t talk to... Read More »
filmAn Education
Every once in a while a film comes along that makes us wish to be a school girl in 1960s London being romanced by a much-older man who, although guided... Read More »
artfreeWater, Earth and Air: A series of intimate installations
Upon sighting the work of Charwei Tsai, all the irritating background noise rumbles and fades into the distance. Quietly consuming all attention are Buddhist mantras delicately handwritten on the surface... Read More »
filmMu Meson Archives
In particle physics, mu meson is the former name for muon, an elementary particle, hypothesized to be the force that binds protons and neutrons together. After it exhibited only a... Read More »
artfilmfreemusicThe Red Rattler
Sounding like a crook’s name from Cluedo, or an 18th century lady killer, events space The Red Rattler certainly evokes an old-school charm. And so it should. Its ethos is... Read More »
filmChe (Part One): The Argentine and Che (Part Two): The Guerilla
Possibly the only person whose diaries have been read and analysed as often as Anne Frank’s, Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara is no stranger. His face alone is one of the most... Read More »
artfreeBy George! Hidden Networks
Once again the City of Sydney is transforming, well, thecity of Sydney, with its public art program Art&About. While there aremany pretty things lining the more conspicuous promenades, it’s down... Read More »
artfree40 Years Kaldor Public Art Projects 1969-2009
Having never quite managed to be in the right place to see a Kaldor Public Art Project in the flesh, I'm pretty excited about the Art Gallery of New South... Read More »
artfreeExhibitions on Cockatoo Island
I can still hear the rousing tune that plays to William Kentridge's video installation, "I am not me, the horse is not mine." Such is the infectious effect of this... Read More »
Playground Blog
How Do You Like Your Coffee: Decaffeinated or Defecated?
We’re a perverse lot, us humans. Tread on a footpath turd or discover an unflushed log and we’ll emit high-pitched girly squeals. But we’ll quite happily fork out big bucks... Read More »
Twitter Updates
The Concrete Playground Daily is out http://paper.li/PLAYGROUNDnews - featuring @TEDchris @GOOD @nytimesarts
4 hours ago
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Starting next Friday: literally HUNDREDS of plays, bands, exhibitions and other miscellaneous performances at your doorstep -...
10 hours ago
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The Concrete Playground Daily is out http://paper.li/PLAYGROUNDnews - featuring @GritFX @BrekkieOnBridge @dailytelegraph @GOOD
10 hours ago
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@ascolour No probs, cool project!
10 hours ago
10 hours ago
Calling all friends and well-wishers of Bon Iver et al. Here is your new favourite band - http://ow.ly/2ylpz
11 hours ago
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