As he prepares to take the reins as artistic director of the National Gallery of Australia, Nick Mitzevich talks about a fresh and controversial approach to the nation’s largest art collection. “As a national institution that has a responsibility in leading debate and a cultural agenda, it’s important there is a strong point of view. I don’t mean bias, I mean passion for putting artists at the centre of things.”

Sydney’s lockout laws have ruined the economic viability of the city’s live entertainment culture, a state parliament inquiry has been told, with venue closures and poker machines replacing band rooms.

His first feature film, Lion, took movie-goers on an emotional journey across the world. Now director Garth Davis lends his visual poetry to the tale of one of history’s most famous women. “If you look into it, Mary Magdalene was a very significant apostle, and was present in all of the key elements, and sometimes mentioned more than other apostles. So she must have been a very significant person, and not the one that we’re learning about in Catholic school growing up. I thought it was amazing that it hadn’t been told.”

Author Gail Jones’s latest novel, The Death of Noah Glass, reflects the cross-cultural interests of an enthusiastic traveller who finds inspiration in getting lost. It also revisits her original passions of art and art history.

Artist Lisa Reihana, creator of the acclaimed video tableau In Pursuit of Venus (Infected), talks about growing up in bicultural New Zealand and her queering of Captain Cook. “The way that I feel things, I feel like sometimes I get messages from other places. I might be thinking about an idea, or in a conflict, and then I might come to a conclusion. It’s to do with intuition. For me, I’m thinking it’s from my people.”

Choreographer Lucy Guerin says ballet’s physical perfectionism may see off young girls from their passion for dance, leaving headstrong boys to take the reins in later life. “Women have really defined dance through the ages, especially in America, with a lot of female choreographers, and in Europe. Yet it feels like it’s going backwards a little bit.”

Filmmaker Warwick Thornton’s latest offering, Sweet Country – a dark, outback, period western – brings the truth of Indigenous history to life through fiction. Says Thornton: “I was ready and really hungry, and a nice, big-arse western, a massive epic full of horses and guns, men scratching their balls, felt really, really good to me.”

Recovering from chemotherapy, Mikala Dwyer is using her highly personal installations to reflect her own chemical journey towards healing. “It’s really weird stuff that pulls apart your DNA, and arranges things and puts it back together again. It did definitely creep into the work.”

As a proud Arrernte–Arabana man, actor Aaron Pedersen believes that through his work and profile he can make inroads into uniting Australia. “We’re the only country in the Commonwealth that doesn’t have a treaty. It’s ridiculous. What are they scared of?”