Madeleine Swain

1 week ago | artshub.com.au | Madeleine Swain

With a plethora of beautiful heritage venues promising great food and wine, warm fireplaces and a variety of art and cultural offerings, Victoria’s reigning Top Tourism Town is an especially great place to visit now the days are shorter and temperatures are heading south. Winter 2025, though, has even more to entice you with a range of arts and cultural activities to keep you entertained and enlightened throughout the season.

2 weeks ago | artshub.com.au | Madeleine Swain

Is it dance? Is it theatre? Is it… simulated sex work? The Act is the result of a collaboration between Amrita Hepi (Bunjalung Ngapuhi artist, dancer, RISING Board member, Triad member of APHIDS and artistic associate at STRUT) and Tilly Lawless (queer sex worker and writer). Having discovered Lawless and been impressed by her work, Hepi made contact and the pair then developed The Act over time with the assistance of co-writer and director Mish Grigor. The results are arresting to say the least.

2 weeks ago | artshub.com.au | Madeleine Swain

Sporting a much shorter hairstyle than is evident from the promotional material (so don’t be taken aback), writer/performer Karin McCracken is one half of the New Zealand Aotearoa creative partnership, EBKM. The other half is co-creator Eleanor Bishop, who directed the company’s RISING show, Heartbreak Hotel, starring McCracken and Simon Leary. EBKM has been making work since 2017, winning awards and touring shows around the world.

2 weeks ago | artshub.com.au | Madeleine Swain

Here’s the challenge: how does a state gallery follow up the most triumphant exhibition in its history? When its stratospherically successful show Yayoi Kusama closed in April, a record-breaking 570,537pumpkin-loving punters had poured through the NGV’s doors to witness all those polka-dotted plastics, intriguing infinity rooms and fields of flowers. If Kusama was something of a gamble for the Gallery it was one that paid off handsomely.

2 weeks ago | artshub.com.au | Madeleine Swain

One of the reasons, if not the most important reason, that Shakespeare’s plays continue to dominate our theatrical landscape four centuries after they were first staged is not just that they examine universal themes and emotions. They can also seemingly cope with infinite reinterpretations, settings and approaches.