playSurfSho 2010
For the aquatically inclined, this weekend's SurfSho at Bondi's southern banks will provide an opportunity to glimpse some of the world's preeminent surfers ply their craft on and above the... Read More »
musicConcrete Playground presents The Scare
The Scare inhabit a truly jaunty world of post-punk swagger. Their debut Chivalry and its scuzzed-out, big-haired, big-guitared rock was largely ignored by their brothers and sisters here in Australia.... Read More »
musicRaekwon
There are fans, and then there are Wu Tang Clan fans. They stand alone in their willingness to tattoo the Wu 'W' onto their skin, memorise every lyric and follow... Read More »
musicThe Barons of Tang
Melbourne gypsy-jazz seven piece Barons of Tang are back in Sydney to drop in to our favourite warehouse (that hasn't been closed down yet, unlike Quirkz), the Red Rattler. It... Read More »
filmDario Argento Film Festival
"The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92", so states the tagline of the Dario Argento film Suspiria, and, unlike the... Read More »
freeplayFree Hip Hop Classes
A long time ago, one very white, suburban, middle-class girl wandered down to the Sydney Dance Company to give hip hop a go. Okay, maybe she had watched too many... Read More »
musicSaturn's Return (Pixies are coming!)
When The Pixies last came to Australia for V Festival, they thought the festival and the audience wasn't the best fit for their sound. So, to make it up to... Read More »
musicMassive Attack
Incongruous fact: Massive Attack were once heavily supported by Neneh Cherry. But that Robert Del Naja and Andrew Vowles returned the favour and worked on Raw Like Sushi is not... Read More »
artfreeGo Font Ur Self*
It’s a one night stand, all types welcome. Unless your name is Times New Roman, Brush Script, Curlz or Comic Sans. Then you’re a slut, and who knows what kind... Read More »
musicJandek
Often atonal and frequently frightening, the Jandek aesthetic lies somewhere between being a monstrous bastard of the Delta blues tradition, a forlorn, cacophonous No Wave homage (a one-man Birthday Party... Read More »
musicImogen Heap
Imogen Heap is embarking upon her inaugural Australian tour in promotion of her latest offering, Ellipse. Released last year, four years after the Grammy Award–nominated Speak for Yourself, the new... Read More »
musicThe Dead Weather
Out of the supergroups and celebrity collaborations that have popped up recently, I think The Dead Weather are making the best music. They are on the other end of the... Read More »
Ongoing Events
filmUp In The Air
George Clooney has been making a habit of anthropomorphising himself this summer. First he played a fox in Wes Anderson's spell-binding Fantastic Mr Fox and now, in Up In The... Read More »
performingThe Beauty Queen of Leenane
There’s something disarming about 'irishness'. It has a geniality to it that speaks of the salt-of-the-earth everyman that every other man wants to have a pint of Guinness with. From... Read More »
performingOrestes 2.0
You awaken in a candy pink room, on a soiled bed where a corner of the mattress has burned open into a charred gash. Here you are febrile and filthy... Read More »
musicperformingShifting Sand
A trip to one of Sydney's beaches can be akin to a pilgrimage. For many those sandy strips are symbolic of all things Australian - whatever that really means -... Read More »
getawaymusicSecret Garden
There are several wonderful things about this festival. The first is that it’s entirely for charity. All proceeds go to the Sarah Hilt Foundation, which funds victims of meningococcal disease.... Read More »
filmMoonlight Cinema
The new program for The Moonlight Cinema kicks off with Sam Taylor Wood’s John Lennon biopic Nowhere Boy. This beautifully constructed film steps behind the legend to reveal a young... Read More »
artfreeMartin Sharp Sydney artist
Plundering the depths of Martin Sharp's personal collection, rumoured to be labyrinthian in its documentation, the Museum of Sydney has unveiled an exhibition comprised of some of Sharp's most iconic... Read More »
filmfreeA Prophet
Jacques Audiard serves up another searing character study of crime with his taut portrait of A Prophet. Following up the beautifully realised The Beat My Heart Skipped, Audiard journeys into... Read More »
filmPrecious
Precious was never going to be a light-hearted trip to the cinema. Harrowing to the point of being labeled “poverty porn,” it is the story of Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey... Read More »
filmDaybreakers (+ Popcorn Taxi premiere Q&A screening)
At first glance, one of Australia’s most anticipated films of 2010 hardly looks like a local. With Ethan Hawke and Willem Dafoe taking the leads, Australian twin brothers Peter and... Read More »
filmEdge of Darkness
Mad Mel is back. After seven years off screen, he’s stepped in front of the camera and into very familiar shoes, once again playing a police detective driven to the... Read More »
artfreeBear Witness
Bear Witness is the artistic output of Ehren Thomas, a multimedia artist, DJ and filmmaker from Ottawa Canada. He remixes appropriated images and sound to create video assemblages that speak... Read More »
artfreeLinda Ngitjanka Napurrula and Tara Marynowsky
Tara Marynowsky’s faint, whispering watercolors appear to float within the canvas like nebulous snapshots of REM-state imaginings, their pale delicacy unencumbered by the volumes of idea, history and myth of... Read More »
artfilmperformingplaySemi-Permanent 2010
An atheist and a (insert deity-worshipping faithful here) walk into the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre. They each take their seat, peer into their bag of convention goodies, and then... Read More »
filmStarlight Cinema
Taking up residence at the North Sydney Oval, the 2010 Starlight Cinema kicks off with a preview screening of the hilarious British political satire In the Loop. Then for the next two... Read More »
filmFrench Film Festival
Each year the French Film Festival arrives in Sydney brimming with cinematic gems and a splash of Parisian chic. This year is no different, with the programme featuring a glittering... Read More »
filmThe Hurt Locker
War is a drug.Or so Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break) and journalist turned screenwriter Mark Boal (In the Valley of Elah) would have us believe. After being embedded with an Explosive... 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 »
artState. Respond. Exploring sustainable design.
Object Gallery is reinvigorating the sustainable design/eco-friendly/carbon neutral debate just when it was starting to sound like a whole lot of codswallop - I mean what a life-cycle; from being... Read More »
artfreethinkArt Month Sydney
If your normal intake of art plateaus out at a monthly round of the AGNSW and a field trip during the Biennale, March is here to turn things up a... Read More »
filmA Single Man
There was little doubt fashion designer Tom Ford’s debut film was going to have style, but what about substance? Effortlessly silencing doubters, Ford has taken Christopher Isherwood’s novel, infused a... Read More »
performingGood Morning, Mr. Gershwin
If you've ever wondered what it would be like to wake up next to George Gershwin, this show just might be the sweet relief you've been waiting for. Set in... Read More »
artJoseph Kosuth
As a prodigy of sorts, with his work One and Three Chairs in 1965, Kosuth began a career of questioning the nature of art. He and his peers (the conceptual... Read More »
artOlafur Eliasson
In a world where the new is often demanded but rarely considered or discussed for any length of time, the Berlin-based Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson is a memorable exception. A... Read More »
filmAlice in Wonderland
Tim Burton’s obsessively anticipated adaptation of Alice in Wonderland finally hits cinemas in all its three-dimensional glory. Burton has transformed Lewis Carroll’s Alice Kingsley into a 19-year-old dreamer (played by... Read More »
filmfreeHymn to Beauty Film Series
As kimono clad onlookers a few floors above traipse around the Hymn to Beauty: The Art of Utamaro exhibition ogling delicate ukiyo-e woodblock prints, rest your weary geta clogs in... Read More »
artfilmfreeSylvie Blocher: What is Missing?
You’re likely to have heard of 'Pavlov’s dog', but did you know famed physiologist Ivan Pavlov actually had four dogs — Druzhok, Sultan, Zhuchko, and Tsygan? It was with Druzhok... Read More »
artperformingOpen Fields
In order to feel incredibly grateful to our early ancestors you only need to think about their persistent curiosity and hazardous experimentation with food. How many lives, throughout the history... Read More »
artHymn to Beauty: The Art of Utamaro
Ukiyo — most often translated as ‘the floating world’ — refers to hedonistic Edo Japan, in particular the ‘pleasure quarters’ of Yoshiwara where brothels, chashitsu tea houses, sumo wrestling... Read More »
artfreeMirror Mirror Then & Now
Comprising two shows across three spaces, Mirror Mirror Then & Now looks at mirror as material in art from both historical-international and contemporary-Australian perspectives. Curated by Ann Stephen, the exhibitions... Read More »
performingSydney Comedy Festival
If laughter is the best medicine, why are doctors and pharmacists still allowed to practise their quackery? Surely I can limp my broken leg into David O'Doherty's show and, with... Read More »
artfreeWilderness
Let's begin by admitting that we, Australians, have a bit of a complex about being on the edge of things. Convicts, immigrants and the dispossessed, so far from the centre... Read More »
artfreeplayMythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns & Mermaids
I was about just verging into adolescence when my parents took me to Loch Ness. It was painful attempting to keep up that despondent, outsider teen thing when all I... Read More »
filmWelcome
France’s illegal immigrant population is given an earnest, charming face in Philippe Lioret's affecting portrait, Welcome. The irony of the title is only the beginning of Lioret’s stirring, incisive look... Read More »
artStudent Fashion at the Powerhouse
If fashion is your passion, as the great Henry Roth said (often) throughout the highly addictive Project Runway, then best get those obscure designer boots down to the Powerhouse Museum... Read More »
filmRear View Mirror: Cinema's History of the 20th Century
The amazing spell of cinema is such that we are still fascinated by the same stories, albeit sometimes with different actors and set within a slightly different context. Although we... Read More »
artfreeThe Tao of Now
Kerr and Judith Neilson of The White Rabbit Gallery describe their extensive and dramatic collection of contemporary Chinese art as a ‘personal anthology’. Indeed The Tao of Now, an exhibition... Read More »
artUp the Cross: Rennie Ellis & Wesley Stacey
There was a note stuck to the back of a Darlinghurst bus stop seat. "ROSE," it read, "Gone up the Cross. Ring me! Trevor." The year wasn't 1970, it was... Read More »
artplayThe 80s are back
Bleached perms. Feathered earrings and feathered hair. Acid-wash. Ra-ra skirts. Rayban Wayfarers. Swatch watch envy. Eyeliner for all. Crop tops over leotards. Bangles, tons of bangles. They may be 80's... Read More »
Playground Blog
Conspirators series: Ben Frost
Iconoclastic because the icon’s elastic, Brisbane-born Ben Frost is an artistic whirlwind who has exhibited in places where the postcode doesn’t start with 2 (or is even called a postcode,... Read More »
Twitter Updates
@theaureview Thanks dude!
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The lads over @pedestriandaily are looking for someone with sweet post-prod skills: http://bit.ly/c1FPJ5
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The Scare have stripped back the distortion and slowed things down to a danceable groove: http://bit.ly/c5QPo1
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Kelly Slater et al will be tearing up the banks at South Bondi this weekend: http://bit.ly/bUdrsA
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Ben Frost's monocle-droppers: children shooting up, cartoon characters masturbating and the faking of his own death: http://bit.ly/cxYage
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@CarriageWorks @Secret_Sydney @lauren_hp @Smerce Thanks for the RTs friends :)
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Want to join our upstart startup? Concrete Playground seeks a Deputy Editor. RT your hearts away! http://bit.ly/9biKYv
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INTERVIEW: The Big Pink's track 'Dominos' edged out Arctic Monkeys , Animal Collective and Jamie T Music for best... http://fb.me/6OIxNPt
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