Culture

Alison Croggon The problems that plague Australian arts and culture long predate 2020, but this year's crises have thrown them into vivid relief.

Stephen A. Russell Since his first short film won the Palme d’Or in 2003, Glendyn Ivin has established himself as one of Australia’s most exciting film and television directors. The forthcoming Penguin Bloom, starring Naomi Watts, brings some light to his dark meditations.

Amelia Winata An artist whose work incorporates fashion, visual art and biomaterials, Alice Potts’ contribution to the NGV Triennial has been profoundly shaped by her experience of Covid-19 in Britain.

Peter Craven At 31, Kendall Feaver continues her brilliant career with her new adaptation of Miles Franklin for Belvoir. “I’m wary of black-and-white thinking … I’m interested in the ‘why’. Why is this fracture happening? Why is this so divisive, so deeply felt and fought over?”

Mahmood Fazal Snoee Badman – the first Australian to release an EP from inside a maximum-security prison – embodies a punk defiance to institutional brutality. “I have a lot of violence to write about. Jail is not good for anyone … Prison gives you a lot of hatred.”

Shaad D’Souza In 2020, the inequities between major-label artists and indie musicians became untenable – and it has led to a surging politicisation of the music industry.

Andy Butler We must support Australian artists in their most ambitious visions to understand the seismic shifts of our time.

Christos Tsiolkas In 2020 we mostly had to watch films at home, and the most exciting possibilities still emerged from independent cinema.

Maxine Beneba Clarke From the trauma of a burning nation, to the desperation of Covid-19, to the united voices of the Black Lives Matter protests, this year called for resilience like few before it.

Peter Boyle 6   It wasn’t the stars that frightened them. It was the stairs. You could climb to the height of the sky but there were more than a thousand steps and each one took a year off your life – you would …

Melissa Lucashenko A new work of short fiction from the Miles Franklin award-winning author of Too Much Lip.

Reviewer: Cher Tan It has been said so many times that it’s almost considered a banality. 2020 was A Year, one that saw societal inequalities further magnified. No thanks, of course, to the elite who carried on business as usual, and who own many of the tools we use …

Reviewer: Fiona Wright In 2020 reading nonfiction felt, to me, like an anchor to normalcy: reading about the big ideas and intimate dramas that were the stuff of our lives and the centre of our concerns before the pandemic reshaped our imaginations and our everyday, for month …

Reviewer: Declan Fry F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that he once thought there were no second acts in American lives. But what of third or fourth acts? Or the lives of Greek Americans migrating to Australia? Such are the conundrums driving Andrew Pippos’s debut novel, …