Hugh White

Mar 30, 2023 | themonthly.com.au | David Neustein |Hugh White |Jo Chandler |Bri Lee

The artist playing with risk and constructing public spaces that make wry observations of how we treat nature in our urban environments Mike Hewson is a Sydney-based artist who challenges conventional notions of nature and permanence, while imbuing ordinary and artificial objects with their own life force. His artwork presents a visceral and arresting but also cheeky and optimistic experience of the Anthropocene.

Mar 30, 2023 | themonthly.com.au | Toni Jordan |Hugh White |Jo Chandler |Bri Lee

The Australian author’s second novel returns to World War One England to consider the significance of meaningful work for women In Pip Williams’ second novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho (Affirm Press), 21-year-old Peggy Jones works alongside her twin sister Maude as a “bindery girl” in Oxford. It is 1914 and although the world around Peggy is changing, she remains stuck and frustrated.

Mar 30, 2023 | themonthly.com.au | Louise Swinn |Hugh White |Jo Chandler |Bri Lee

Asked to teach a podcasting class, Bodie Kane returns to the New Hampshire boarding school where she spent four formative but wretched years, and where in 1995 her former roommate, 17-year-old Thalia, was murdered. The novel starts in 2018 when Bodie is 40 and ends in 2022 – four quick years in midlife, but for a teenager four years is an entire world. Rebecca Makkai appreciates the allure of reopening the sealed vault of teenagehood.

Mar 30, 2023 | themonthly.com.au | Shane Danielsen |Hugh White |Jo Chandler |Bri Lee

The venerable Polish director’s latest film follows a donkey on a moving yet unsentimental journey Jerzy Skolimowski is 84, an age when most creative artists are either deep into a long creative decline, retired or dead. Instead, a decade and a half into the improbable second act of an illustrious career, he’s created one of his boldest and most accomplished works, a film whose energy, intelligence and ferocity would be remarkable in someone half his age.

Mar 30, 2023 | themonthly.com.au | Richard King |Hugh White |Jo Chandler |Bri Lee

The AI-writing app ChatGPT poses a challenge not only to our education system but to how we think University of Notre Dame’s Fremantle campus is marbled into the city’s West End, which means the latter goes eerily quiet during the long summer break between semesters.