Arts

Outback Arts, the Regional Arts Development Organisation for Far West NSW, has launched a brand new interactive website, Creative Country, to showcase and assist travellers and locals discover the art, culture and heritage the region has to offer ... “It’s truly remarkable what this wide, wild outback place has to offer, and Creative Country is the perfect tool to gather this information together": Jamie-Lea Trindall, Executive Director, Outback Arts.

Obviously every good mystery novel has a few twists and turns but even as a regular reader of this genre I didn’t see this story’s twist coming. The fact that this book has lingered in my mind long after I finished reading it is testament to this author’s talent at her craft. I’ll certainly be getting my hands on another of Holly Throsby’s books.

Honor Auchinleck. Timing and circumstances ensure some wartime tragedies are more defining than others and so it was with Malcolm Chisholm. He was the first Australian to die and the first of some 60,000 Australians who lost their lives on the First World War battlefields. His death has resonated through more than a century and well beyond the Upper Murray.

On the weekend, Sarah Jarvis was awarded first place in the 17 Years Open Reserve Graceful Calisthenics Solo competition at George Jenkins Theatre in Frankston ... Calisthenics is a form of strength training consisting of a variety of movements and participants have to perform a set of exercises in competition.

Wet weather may have forced a last-minute venue change, but it was raining talent at the Maclean Bowling Club on March 25 as singers and songwriters from across the region stepped onto the stage and let their vocals and instrumental skills shine during local music festival Clarence Tunes ... A star-studded line up including Isla and Bella, Waiting For Alex, Olivia Hinde, and Kirra Hallam, earned repeated rounds of applause from an appreciative audience, who described the performers as “outstanding”, “awesome”, and “amazing.”

From Saturday 25th March Horsham Regional Art Gallery invites the community to celebrate up and coming Spanish born, Ararat-based artist Juana Beltran in her transformative reflection of her time in the Australian desert. Formed from the desert plains, the human-like figures which form the body of work in the exhibition project shadows that represent a reflection of our other selves.

Rod Moss. Good rains recharged  Lhere Mparntwe (Todd River) drawing crowds to its banks for the infrequent spectacle. When its rushing subsided waterholes became an unparalleled recreational attraction. In full rage it is perilous as friends, Johnathan Rodd and Rowley Hill, would discover, drowning near Wigleys Gorge.

Cairns Indigenous Art Fair (CIAF) has confirmed an impeccable line up of 15 Indigenous fashion designers and wearable art makers from across Queensland whose collective response to the 2023 theme ‘Woven’ will tell a powerful story marking 10 years of fashion performances.

I was ready to lose myself in a fictional world, and this was the perfect escapist genre read. Linnell writes authentically of small town rural Australia, with the characters, landscape and community events immediately recognisable to anyone who has lived in the country ... I learned plenty about flower farming and the sweat and beauty and hope involved. I learned a bit about the path junior cricketers take as they strive to move into senior professional careers. I salivated over Diana’s baking and wished for recipes at the back of the book ...

Studio? Who needs a studio? I paint anywhere the mood takes me. Easel? Who needs an easel?  Margaret Olley.

A new exhibition showcasing works by artists with disability will open in Alice Springs on Saturday, 25 March. Strong Feelings, which will take place at Red Hot Arts, includes a mixture of portraiture and storytelling, using costume, digital art, song, soundscapes, video and photography.

You will most likely know Alexander McCall Smith as the ingenious and inexhaustible author of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series or any number of his more than 80 other titles, but it was art that brought McCall Smith to Maldon last weekend. The cherished Cascade Gallery is currently showing the work of the entrancing and prolific artist Robert Maclaurin ... McCall Smith is an avid admirer - but they were yet to meet.

“I just like to depict life,” said artist Brian Williams as we discussed his upcoming Cohuna art exhibition ... From landscapes to seascapes, Brian’s work captures the beauty of the Australian environment, the animals and people.

The hardy stock saddle is a much-loved outback symbol but its story has never been written - until now. Wild Ride captures this colourful tale, involving colonial pioneers and Aboriginal stockmen and women; bushrangers and young horsemen sent to the Boer War. It catalogues the earliest models produced by amateurs sewing kneepads onto traditional English saddles, through to the development of the modern stock fender.

A special installation featuring a dragon and fiery BENDIGO letters has been unveiled at the Rosalind Park piazza to celebrate Richard Wagner’s epic opera series, Ring Cycle, taking up residence in Bendigo’s Ulumbarra Theatre for the next five weeks.

The Labour Day long weekend saw the Birchip community celebrating its many talents and services at the Mali Heart Festival, as the most recent Mali Heart Art piece nears completion on the Historical Society wall.

Treasured Australian singer-songwriter and Maldon local Mandy Connell is the face behind a monthly mini-festival at the Kangaroo Hotel in Maldon. The event, called Goldfields Folk & Roots: Roo Fest, offers a curated afternoon of folk and roots music celebrating local and invited musicians.

Seven years in the making and interrupted by a Covid cancellation, Donald’s 2023 Esoteric festival, “Wild Wastelands”, proved to be a sell-out, with a gathering of 7,500 paying patrons converging on the site, just north of Donald for the five day event. Local promoter, Sam Goldsmith, has invested heavily in the continued development of the location, spending months upgrading infrastructure for this year’s event.

Fancy a writers' festival with a bit of rustic charm and some good old-fashioned country hospitality? This March, head to the historic Avon Valley town of York in Western Australia's Wheatbelt for a unique event: a weekend featuring some of WA's finest authors and poets in conversation with each other, unmediated and unplugged!

NORPA is creating a pop-up theatre making space and creative studio in a pavilion at Lismore Showgrounds that will be at the centre of the theatre company’s activity for 2023 ... “It is important for the NORPA Makers Hub to be in Lismore": NORPA’s Artistic Director Julian Louis.

Local Narelle Bremner toiled for hundreds of hours to create this stunning mosaic table she generously donated to the Tennant Creek Women’s Refuge. Unveiled at the International Women’s Day celebration at the Refuge’s Peace Garden Wednesday evening, the massive round table is a stunning piece of art.

A new exhibition by Greg Mallon is showing at EDGE galleries until Monday, March 13. Greg’s works resemble maps of the land.