Maddee Clark

For Bangarra’s former artistic director Stephen Page, his brother’s song ‘Young Man’, written in Yugambeh language, is a gift to the future.

As the daughter of a painter, cinematographer Ari Wegner found inspiration from an early age in the portraiture of Lucian Freud.

For artist Jonathan Jones, Aunty Esme Timbery’s striking shell works are a direct line to Aboriginal artmaking traditions at La Perouse.

Artist Shen Xin says the layering of desire, bondage and labour in Hito Steyerl’s video Lovely Andrea has deeply informed their understanding of image.

A major inspiration behind Jacek Koman’s current role is the father-son love story in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead.

When Joel Ma was a teenager, his mother took him to see William Yang’s one-man show Sadness, and it changed his life.

Judy Watson has been enchanted for almost two decades by the lightness and ephemerality of Pat Steir’s Waterfall Mirage.

Glass artist Liam Fleming finds an inspiring sense of freedom in a painting by Australian Modernist Frank Hinder.

Poet Jazz Money talks about how Alexis Wright’s novel Carpentaria has inspired her work and paved the way for other Indigenous writers.

Tina Havelock Stevens says Gimme Shelter, the classic 1970 documentary about The Rolling Stones, shows her something different every time she watches it.

Artist Jenna Lee discusses the transformative energy of fire in Makiko Ryujin’s Burning Vessel.

Dana Schutz’s work showed Amber Boardman how invented characters in paintings can take on lives of their own.

Yorta Yorta soprano and composer Professor Deborah Cheetham AO discusses how the painting Dulka Warngiid (Land for All) (2007) has influenced her musical direction.

Cabaret artist Mama Alto talks about the influence of Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music on her life and work.

Writer and academic Bri Lee talks about the influence of painter Eugene von Guérard on her work and outlook.

Acclaimed New York choreographer Pam Tanowitz discusses the influence of George Balanchine’s ballet Serenade on her own dance works, including one that will soon be performed by The Australian Ballet.

Acclaimed Indigenous artist Tony Albert finally has his collections of kitsch objects – which he calls Aboriginalia – all in one place, but his current fascination is with fabrics.

Stage and screen actor Dan Spielman has a substantial side hustle as a woodworker and joiner. His workshop practice informs his on-camera work – and vice versa – in fascinating, unexpected ways.

Muruwari writer Jane Harrison is best known for her award-winning play Stolen, but her latest project is morphing through several different literary forms.

Working under lockdown on her new album, while contending with a diagnosis of ADHD, meant a wholly different process for musician June Jones.

Multi-award-winning playwright Patricia Cornelius is working on an adaptation of her novel about the fallout of the Vietnam War, My Sister Jill – when she’s not gardening.

The poet and artist Bella Li says that if it weren’t for deadlines – and the inspiration provided by tennis players – she would never finish her work.

Multidisciplinary artist Abdul Abdullah has found that the pandemic has made him refocus his practice on painting, even as it has taught him to aim for balance.

Over the past year, parenthood and the pandemic have given ARIA award-winning artist Mo’Ju the chance to think big about her next album.

Running a dance company under lockdown presents unique challenges, but that hasn’t stopped Chunky Move’s Antony Hamilton.

After the tumult of 2020, Kudjla–Gangalu artist Daniel Boyd aims to find the beauty within chaos, as he continues to reframe the mythologies of colonialism.

Using glass as a medium, Yhonnie Scarce makes art that testifies to the trauma enacted on Aboriginal people and communities. She speaks about travelling to memorial sites around the world and the importance of truth-telling. “I don’t like being lied to … They were setting off bombs, and they knew there were blackfullas around in that area, but they didn’t care.”

Building on her earlier works essaying colonialism and her experience as an Iranian migrant to Australia, photographer Hoda Afshar turned to presenting the humanity of the men detained on Manus Island. “Photography has turned into this whole trend of empty landscapes – no sign of human presence whatsoever, just traces of human beings. Traces of a tyre on asphalt, rubbish, leftover food, signs that say there were people here, but no human presence. It shocks me. I think, yes, it’s important to acknowledge the history of photography, how image-making has abused and manipulated narratives. We have to acknowledge the relationship between image-making and power. But to dismantle it is not to completely avoid that dialogue.”