Review: The Neverending Story

Harvest Rain Theatre Company Popular 1984 movie The Neverending Story comes to life in this stage adaption. Director Tim O’Connor succeeds in asking the audience to use similar levels of imagination to the book on which the tale is based. O’Connor’s own imagination has flowered into a clear and compact concept that fits — magically […]


Festival to focus on urban design

Brisbane’s inaugural urban design and film festival will be launched tonight at the State Library of Queensland. The design festival called U.R.(BNE) will focus on Brisbane’s public spaces throughout May. The Films project seeks to raise the awareness of urban design and the built environment and generate a greater interest in architecture, public spaces and […]


City organ gets $2m tune-up

The Brisbane City Hall organ will make its grand re-entrance to Brisbane’s cultural life next year after restoration costing about $1.9 million. Intense restoration work on the 1890s classic organ continues in a workshop at Hemmant in Brisbane’s east. Master organ builder Simon Pierce said a 10-member team from Pierce Pipe Organs was restoring the […]


Review: Dickens’ Women

Playhouse Theatre, Qld Performing Arts Centre Charles Dickens used his gift of the gab as journalist, author and actor to climb the social ladder. Miriam Margolyes, character actor extraordinaire, accompanied by pianist John Martin, gives us a whirlwind social tour of Dickens’ life. They settle comfortably into the Victorian drawing room featuring a gilt-edged portrait […]


Review: The Laramie Project

Great team work by Nash Theatre has resulted in a powerful and effective production of The Laramie Project. The play begins with eight actors standing among eight chairs on a dimly-lit stage. Together they proceed to tell the shocking story of the 1998 fatal beating of gay university student Matthew Shepard in Laramie, in the […]


Thousands gather to help fire victims’ families

Thousands of people gathered in Queen Street Mall on Friday night for a five-hour charity concert that raised more than $15,000 for the victims of the Slacks Creek house fire. Labeled the worst house fire in the state in a decade it claimed the lives of 11 people from the Tongan and Samoan community. Eight […]


Travellers’ tales evoke a world of images

Jenni Kelly was one of six award-winning artists who took part in the “Travellers’ Tales” exhibition funded by the Moreton Bay Regional Council. The event was held this month at the Pine Rivers Art Gallery in Strathpine. The theme “Travellers’ Tales” embraced memoirs of the artists’ intrepid travels derived from photographs translated into art pieces […]


Ash Grunwald loves that life on the road

Ash Grunwald’s music is a mix of grungy folk dashed with a side of electric blues. His latest tour, “The Road Dog Diaries”, was named simply for the road tripping lifestyle he’s adopted. “It comes from the title of my blog and it is basically what I am – a road dog. Always moving and […]


Review: Dr Zhivago

Based on an iconic book and epic three-hour movie, the musical adaptation of Dr Zhivago has a lot to live up to. After all, song and dance would not be the first choice for many to convey the loneliness, individualism and ideology explored in Boris Pasternak’s novel. Yet director Des McAnuff and composer Lucy Simon […]


Origin fans don’t come any marooner than Steve

Walking up the driveway, any lingering doubts about whether I’d arrived at the right address are immediately dispelled by the visually arresting maroon that smothers the front window of Stephen Swarts’ residence. I step through the doorway where I’m greeted by Swart, who’s donned his (what I imagine to be) characteristic Queensland jersey and beanie. […]


Young string players charm Brisbane Square

The Terzina String Trio entertained patrons with enchanting baroque music at the Brisbane Square library last week as part of the Fête de la Musique Brisbane festival. The two-year-old trio is made up of Queensland Conservatorium students – twin 19-year-old brothers Michael Poulton on violin and Phillip Poulton on viola and Camilla Tafra, 20, on […]


Haunted by an image of atrocity

When you walk into a gallery you never expect to leave haunted by an image that you saw. South African photographer Jodi Bieber captured the very confronting image of a disfigured Afghan girl who had both her ears and nose cut off as retribution for fleeing her husband’s home. This photograph is so powerful in […]


Press photography exhibition: capturing an instant in time

The combination of a great photo and explanatory text is powerful. The shock of the image stays in your mind in a way that even the most descriptive story never does. World Press Photo 11, the 54th annual World Press Photo exhibition of photojournalism is showing at Brisbane Powerhouse. It has been publicised with a […]


Reynolds’ “Portrait of Aneas Mackay” is remarkable in its silence

It’s amazing what can be the most attention grabbing artistic work in a collection. People joke about sculptures made from great heaps of rubbish, and paintings that are reminiscent of their 4-year-old niece’s artistic triumphs. But in this case, we see a quiet painting of a man who seems as if he isn’t even there, […]


Glimpses into the life of an artist who died too young

Queensland Art Gallery When painter Amrita Sher-Gil died in 1941 aged 28 she was already recognised as one of India’s most important artists, though she left behind only about 150 canvasses. Born in Hungary to a Jewish opera-singer mother and an Indian Sikh father, her talent was nurtured early and at the age of 16 […]


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