Culture

Maddee Clark 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.”

Nick Buckley Since releasing her first album, Gordi has experienced three years of emotional upheaval, which she has channelled into a new record, Our Two Skins. She speaks to Nick Buckley about losing her grandmother, falling in love over the phone and creating music in self-enforced isolation. “That’s when I feel most creative, when I don’t have everything at my disposal. You know, how I might make one sound if I don’t have that thing. It’s like creating unique moments out of nothing.”

Steve Dow Four weeks after becoming the artistic director of Sydney’s Griffin Theatre Company, Declan Greene had to cancel two plays because of Covid-19. He speaks about this extraordinary challenge, his childhood flair for drama and his ambitions for the company. “I’m constantly thinking I should do more to change things in the world … I’m interested in reconfiguring the space I work in to make it a more equal place.”

Shaad D’Souza During his early career, the music industry was intent on fitting Moses Sumney into boxes. But as his latest album, græ, attests, he is an artist determined to seek his own truths beyond the confines of expectation and identity. “I’m really interested in the collapse of identity politics, increasingly. I want us to get to a place where we can seek equality for ourselves without having to define as anything that’s simple. It feels really petrifying, the idea that you explain yourself to someone in order to gain their respect [and that] in doing that, you’re kind of solidifying your identity in a way that feels quite limiting.”

Ellen van Neerven Anglo–Nigerian author Bernardine Evaristo wrote seven books before her Booker Prize-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other, catapulted her into the limelight. “I have done the work for people to now engage with it. It’s just the most incredible thing, because at my age – I’m 60 – to suddenly become an overnight success, is very exciting. It’s also a real moment of hope for people who have been writing for a long time and haven’t received the kind of attention they’d like to get. And also, for Black women, and Black British people.”

Michelle Law Drawing on director Alan Yang’s family story to depict a Taiwanese migrant in America, Tigertail is beautifully shot and acted, but the film doesn’t live up to its emotional potential.

Peter Craven The Young Vic’s 2014 production of A Streetcar Named Desire, recently rebroadcast during the Covid-19 lockdown, reminds this viewer of the work’s power but also of the test of matching the smouldering energy of Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh.

Shaad D’Souza Conceived and executed in isolation, Charli XCX’s latest album, how i’m feeling now, fearlessly charts new terrain while capturing the complex emotions of a stable relationship and the sadness of life away from friends.

Elliot Perlman A new short story from an award-winning author of The Street Sweeper.

DBC Pierre New short fiction from South Australian-born award-winning author DBC Pierre.

Ceridwen Dovey A new short story by Ceridwen Dovey, winner of the 2014 Queensland Literary Award for her collection Only the Animals.

Reviewer: Louise Swinn When British philosopher and mathematician Frank Ramsey wrote in the 1920s that the wellbeing of future generations should not be given less weight than current generations, he was ahead of his time. This consideration might affect how we vote, where …

Reviewer: Shu-Ling Chua Breasts and Eggs, Mieko Kawakami’s first novel to be translated into English, explores the mundane indignity of inhabiting a woman’s body. It opens with 30-year-old Natsuko meeting her elder sister Makiko and sullen adolescent niece …

Reviewer: Elizabeth Flux For as long as Canadian writer Eva Holland can remember, she has had two major fears – the death of her mother, and heights. When her mother unexpectedly dies of a stroke and, a few months later, Holland finds herself frozen in terror while ice …