This week we’re celebrating the weird wacky and wonderful that Sydney has to offer in its diverse cultural scene.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide June 10 - 16
Sydney is buzzing at the moment! If you haven’t already got your fix of culture with Vivid and the Sydney Film Festival, then check out some cool theatre and art shows that are happening this week.
Read moreReview: Mercury Fur
How far would you go to save the ones you love? This is the confronting core thematic question that Phillip Ridley’s Mercury Fur forces us to answer. Premiering in 2005 at the Plymouth Theatre Royal in London, Mercury Fur’s highly controversial and disturbing concepts prompted regular audience walk-outs during initial runs of the play, and it received thoroughly mixed reviews in its early days.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide June 3 - 9
While Sydney is buzzing thanks to the beautiful lights of Vivid, let’s delve into some of the darker parts of Sydney with this week’s culture guide.
Read moreBetween These Walls: aMBUSH Gallery
Canberra, known for its major institutions with national implications, and broad avenues that circle suburbia in the bush, does not immediately scream independent arts and culture, but a newly opened gallery in the heart of ANU is creating a place for the growth of a local arts scene.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide May 27 – June 2
While it may seem like all of Sydney’s culture is concentrated around Circular Quay for Vivid, the galleries, stages and unusual places of Sydney continue to showcase the works of artists emerging and established from across this city’s diverse cultural landscape.
Read moreThe Hidden Pulse: the changing heartbeat of the Sydney Opera House
While Vivid lights up the sails of the Sydney Opera House and turns the interior of the venue into a home for forward-thinking contemporary music, Sarah Rees, curator of Contemporary Art at the Sydney Opera House, and Head of Contemporary Music Ben Marshall felt something was missing.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide May 20 - 26
Combining innovative and interpretative theatre with photography, this week’s Culture Guide looks at how what we see can ask us to change how we think.
Read moreLighting up with language: Marri Dyin
Few contemporary developments have been as committed to foregrounding their First Nations history as Barangaroo. From the design of the headland park that evoke pre-colonisation landscapes, to projects such as UTP’s Blak Box which investigated the relationship between language and the earth beneath one’s feet.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide May 13 - 19
With the Sydney Comedy Festival closing at the end of this week, it’s time to look at some of the best comedy acts happening in Sydney.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide May 6 - 12
Let’s take a look at stories featuring women, supporting women or about women this week. Celebrating female creatives is something we can never do enough!
Read moreReview: SAMO Is Dead
While the creative process is often explored in works of theatre and performance, the elitism of the arts gets a direct dressing down in new play SAMO Is Dead.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide April 29 – May 5
This week is about celebrating the old and the new. As younger artists draw inspiration from those who have come before and reinterpret the classics, the line between the old and the new is ever more blurred.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide April 22 – 28
This week we’re highlighting some of the ways that artists seek to engage their audience. Whether through talks, performance or mail, artists are breaking out of the white cube and inviting into a dialogue with them.
Read more2020 Biennale of Sydney
Speaking at the announcement of the first artists to exhibit at the 2020 Biennale of Sydney, Artistic Director Brook Andrew highlighted the meaning of the Biennale’s theme, Nirin, meaning edge in his mother’s Wiradjuri language.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide April 15 - 21
Check out all the art on in Sydney this week. We dive into the most intriguing new artworks and exhibitions happening.
Read moreThe Inaugural Dobell Drawing Prize: A Revitalised Bastion of Excellence
For the first time since 2012, the prestigious Dobell Drawing Prize was awarded on March 27 in a glittery ceremony at the National Arts School in Darlinghurst. Previously part of the Archibald Prize, the now-standalone award attracted the doyens of the Sydney art world, but the true star of the night was the art adorning the walls, breathing life into the gallery space and the centrepiece of all conversation.
Read moreReview: Venus in Fur
David Ives’ 2010 play drops the audience into an audition room. Writer-director Thomas Novachek struggles to find the leading lady for his one-dimensional, misogynistic adaptation of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs - until the mysterious Vanda Jordan literally appears before him like an unholy apparition clad in lingerie.
Read moreVenus In Fur: An enticing shift of power imbalances
Emma Burns, the director of upcoming student play Venus in Fur, Emma Burns, “knew it had to happen” immediately after reading the enticing script. As the theatre world turns itself inside out after its own #metoo revelations, this script by David Ives puts these convulsions on the stage which often covered exploitative behaviour.
Read moreBYO Culture Guide April 8 - 14
This week we celebrate the freedom of expression that comes with art in all different forms. It’s about giving people a voice to share their thoughts, opinions and ideas. This week there are some big ideas being brought forward.
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