Laurie Anderson has been a creative pioneer for decades, working across genre, time and place. Now 71 and still prolific, she continues to push boundaries with virtual reality projects. “You, yourself, your body kind of disappears and you have this incredible freedom to fly and to observe things that you wouldn’t be able to do in your body. So it’s almost like you’re as free as your imagination and you become your own imagination. It’s very, very thrilling.”

Visiting New Zealand poet Hera Lindsay Bird in Wellington.

A journey down the Whanganui River with Charles Ranginui.

Satirist Armando Iannucci has turned from his hit TV comedies Veep and The Thick of It to mining the lethal absurdities of the Soviet Union for his film The Death of Stalin. He talks about the comedy of power. “It seems strangely topical with all the talk about facts and alternative facts, new truths and old truths, and the authoritarianism too. It’s frightening.”

A visit to the studio of glass sculptor Emma Camden.

On the eve of the NGV Triennial, artist Candice Breitz turned a work about refugees into a work of protest directed at the gallery’s security contracts. “While I am grateful for the immense support I have received from the NGV,” she announced, “it would be morally remiss, in light of the above knowledge, for me to remain silent in the context of the current conversation that is taking place around the Australian government’s ongoing and systematic abuse of refugees.”

Housebound with an infant, the author watches the street life unfold.

Violinist Lizzy Welsh talks before her rehearsal for the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music.

As an actress on the rise, Angourie Rice is determined to find roles beyond the cookie-cutter teenage girls. Here, she talks about the importance of female representation, working with Kidman and Coppola, and frocking up for The Beguiled.