Culture

Drew Rooke As Australia’s first Aboriginal press photographer, Mervyn Bishop created history, helping to take control of how Indigenous people were portrayed in images. Five decades later, his passion for observing the human side of daily life has not diminished.

Steve Dow 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.”

Ronnie Scott Alice Chipkin and Jessica Tavassoli’s graphic memoir takes an insightful look at big issues such as clinical depression and sexuality – but at its heart it’s also just an intimate portrait of long-time friends.

Susan Chenery Willem Dafoe’s dark charisma has helped him build a career on complicated, often villainous roles, but for his latest film he narrates a documentary about adventurers who climb and throw themselves off mountains. Such people push themselves to the edge, as Dafoe does. But he says he is not so brave – “I don’t even want to go in a hot-air balloon” – and admits to vertigo.

Jackie Dent Despite Agatha Gothe-Snape’s claim that she makes art ‘you would roll your eyes at’, public engagement is an important element of her work, which incorporates performance and audience instructions. “There will always be a crisis that precipitates an action. It’s a pretty violent and unsustainable way to work emotionally but it does create otherwise unimagined outcomes.”

Patrick Hartigan At Sydney Contemporary, the commercial realities of the art fair dissolve as he apprehends the elemental power of Rover (Julama) Thomas’s works.

Peter Craven Gary Abrahams’ production of Angels in America is stark and shrewd, and has in Helen Morse a virtuosic display of restrained acting.

Helen Razer With their new show Get Krack!n, Kate McLennan and Kate McCartney have expanded their satirical universe from food culture to the dumb decline of the knowledge class.

Jennifer Down Unravelling Steve Coogan and The Trip to Spain.

Maxine Beneba Clarke Waiting for Peak Uncomfortable Gonzo with John Safran.

Omar J. Sakr A drive with founder of western Sydney literary collective Sweatshop, Michael Mohammed Ahmad.

Reviewer: CG Home Fire is a novel of such acute insight into our contemporary condition that it’s a bit of a shock to realise it’s based on a play written 2500 years ago. Author Kamila Shamsie signals her debt to Sophocles’ Antigone …

Reviewer: WZ “Later, the four remaining women could fully agree on only two things. One: No one saw the bushland swallow up Alice Russell. And two: Alice had a mean streak so sharp it could cut you.” Jane Harper sure knows how to start a novel, and with …

Reviewer: JR It begins with the Maid of Orléans, history’s most charismatic female hero, languishing in an English dungeon. Great ladies glide through and brutish guards hurl abuse, but none suspect her secret: the warrior virgin who led an army and changed …