Concrete Playground

Thursday, 15th October - Sunday, 15th November
@ Domain Theatre, Art Gallery of New South Wales

‘You gave me my first glimpse of a real life and then you ask me to carry on with a false one. No-one can endure that.’ - Newland Archer, The Age of InnocenceAs an accompaniment to its current exhibition Printmaking in the Age of Romanticism, the Art Gallery of New South Wales is...

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Monday, 14th September - 5AM
@ Ballast Point Park

According to the ever-dependable Bureau of Meteorology, this Sunday promises to be a bloody brilliant spring day (fine and sunny with a top temp of 28 – yes!). Just perfect, I should think, for a picnic.And what do you know; the good folks over at FBi Radio already have one...

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Friday, 2nd October - Sunday, 31st January
@ Art&About

Once again the City of Sydney is transforming, well, thecity of Sydney, with its public art program Art&About. While there aremany pretty things lining the more conspicuous promenades, it’s down thelaneways where the – dare I say it? – more interesting things are happening.Now in the second year of its most...

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Saturday, 3rd October - Sunday, 14th February
@ Art Gallery of New South Wales

Having never quite managed to be in the right place to see a Kaldor Public Art Project in the flesh, I'm pretty excited about the Art Gallery of New South Wales' Kaldor retrospective. Seriously. Sure, tucking some glossy photographs neatly into the old white cube seems slightly anathema to the...

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Saturday, 10th October - 2PM
@ Oxford Art Factory

 Self-proclaimed ‘acid ninjas of the inner-west’, Sticky Fingers, are launching their EP. (Remember the cover The Rolling Stones did for their album of the same name? The zipper? Awesome. Well these guys have nothing to with that except that they’re pretty awesome as well). You might call their music a...

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Friday, 25th September - Friday, 13th November
@ Chauvel Cinema

Axes do not fall silently and men die neither quickly nor quietly; their life splutters out of them in a mixture of breath and blood. It may well be that butchering a man is ‘easier than cutting sheep’ but it is, whatever your sensibility, far more gruesome.The story of notorious...

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Sunday, 27th September - Sunday, 25th October
@ Art&About

It’s hard to do throw ups when you got no can control. Maybe it’s time to give up trying and join a knitting circle instead. Your nanna will be pleased.Guerilla knitting/urban knitting/knitting graffiti has taken over many a city and now it’s Kings Cross’ turn as local art collective Reef Knot...

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Tuesday, 24th November - Sunday, 13th December
@ Playhouse, Sydney Opera House

Prepare to be lulled into a heady state of amusement. Daniel Kitson is bringing his self-deprecating, brilliant arrogance to Sydney for the second time in two months, with his latest one-man theatre show.Kitson is a comedian who makes the state of being slightly depressed seem like the ultimate way to...

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Sunday, 4th October - 4AM
@ Roslyn Oxley9

Because it’s kind of a big deal, you’ve probably already heard about artist Tatzu Nishi’s (alias Tazro Niscino alias Tatsurou Bashi alias Tatzu Oozu) War and peace and in between. You have right? The Kaldor project enclosing Gilbert Bayes’ two equestrian sculptures outside the Art Gallery of New South Wales?...

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Thursday, 1st October - 5AM
@ Firstdraft

Good news! Firstdraft Gallery – that tireless incubator of emerging art – will survive the notice of compulsory renovations recently served to them (reeking of impending doom). Sound the Hurrah!Their recent fundraising auction was a roaring success and as a result the gallery will close on October 18 until early...

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Thursday, 24th September - Saturday, 17th October
@ Griffin Theatre

The desert is a strange, lonely place. Cacti advance. A catcopulates with a coyote. Out there you have too much time to think. Anything ispossible. As is nothing.Acclaimed playwright Jose` Rivera (The Motorcycle Diaries), creates a double world in References toSalvador Dali Make Me Hot. One is a dream, the...

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Sunday, 4th October - Sunday, 29th November
@ Art Gallery of New South Wales, Level 2 Contemporary Projects Space

Amongst all the fanfare of the opening of War and peaceand in between at the AGNSW, another showseems to have slipped quietly under the radar. It’s a shame really because VideoSwell Sydney is a mini showcase of somesuperior video art.Featuring work by Sydney’s video art heavyweights, TheKingpins, TV Moore and...

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Friday, 16th October - 12PM
@ Peer Gallery

GO FONT UR SELF* is returning to Sydney with chapter 3 in its series of typographical revelations.With a truly international line up of ‘typographic misfits’ – hailing from Sydney, NYC and the Ukraine amongst others – GO FONT UR SELF* celebrates the taken for granted art of typography. The work...

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Friday, 16th October - Thursday, 1st October
@ MOP

Entering Drew Bickford's Mongrel, a collection of intricately executed illustrations, is like, as one observer put it, "arriving at the gates of hell". Yet it is a sweet hell. A hell from whose gates you may not wish to be turned away.Humanity's obsession with the mongrel and monster is evident...

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Saturday, 24th October - Saturday, 14th November
@ CarriageWorks

Sometimes art events in aid of community awareness about something or other can be a little naff. Sometimes they're all about the artists acting heroic while pretending they are not waiting for that commercial gallery to call — oooh ouch! But sometimes, when the artists involved are attempting something of...

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Thursday, 22nd October - 11AM
@ Dixon room, Mitchell wing, State Library of New South Wales

In 1948, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh bet a bunch of local actors in a Sydney pub that they could recite Australian poetry as good as any local. To prove it they went to a radio station and recorded Banjo Patterson’s Last Week and Clancy of the Overflow. The recording...

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Saturday, 24th October - Saturday, 14th November
@ Sarah Cottier Gallery

The self-deprecating not-humour humour of Sydney artist Christopher Hanrahan's work makes it the kind that continues to resonate long after you've encountered it. If you saw his sculpture Endless Holes (four decanters for CB) which was part of his solo exhibition Table of Knowledge last year, you'll know what I...

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Friday, 30th October - Saturday, 21st November
@ GRANTPIRRIE Gallery

Sam Smith equals awesome video art. His work defies any complaint about video as a skill-less medium. Special Effects, Smiths second solo show at GRANTPIRRIE, combines geometric sculptural forms and meticulously produced video works. Part critique, part celebration, Special Effects plays on the ways in which digital effects have so come...

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Friday, 6th November - 7PM
@ The Red Rattler

There are lies, and then there are lies. There are those shameless, blatant untruths told with a twitch and a sneer that are about as cool as Alexander Downer in a sauna. But then there are those lies, dashing in three-piece suit or silk stockings, negroni in hand, which make...

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Tuesday, 17th November - Wednesday, 16th December
@ SCA, COFA , NAS

In true education-institution style, Sydney University announces the 2009 Degree Show at its art school affiliate, Sydney College of the Arts, to be "a chance for all students to stand together with their peers and reflect on their achievements as well as their goals for the future". Bah! While this...

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Thursday, 26th November - 11AM
@ MOP

Yep, the pointy end of the year is here for Sydney. The Christmas party after Christmas after Christmas party marathon is about to start and, despite all the good advice on offer EVERYWHERE, things are going to get messy. But, even before the marathon begins, the compulsion has kicked in...

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Thursday, 26th November - Saturday, 19th December
@ GrantPirrie

I want. I Want. I WANT! and I spend too much time looking in the mirror (and to be honest, at my reflection in shop windows). Ooh so painful to admit.There's something of the narcissist in me, I guess.It is true, as Jason Smith tells us in the catalogue essay...

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Monday, 16th November - Sunday, 3rd January
@ Campbelltown Arts Centre

Adapted from the title of the 2008 Haruki Murakami book What I Think About When I Think About Running (itself adapted from the title of Raymond Carver's 1980 short story, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love), What I Think About When I Think About Dancing is an...

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Tuesday, 9th February - Sunday, 21st February
@ Playhouse, Sydney Opera House

If any Australian musician was going to play Johnny Cash, it would have to be Tex Perkins. It just makes sense. It's the vibe or something. And so he is (playing Johnny Cash I mean).The Man in Black - The Johnny Cash Story is the product of writer Jim McPherson's...

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Tuesday, 24th November - Friday, 4th December
@ The Vanguard

Trained by an opera singer and influenced by jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday, Parisian chanteuse Caroline Nin describes her discovery of Edith Piaf as the "ultimate gift". Part tribute, part re-invigoration Nin's show HYMNE A PIAF is a journey through Piaf's "musical life and times", cabaret...

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Wednesday, 6th January - Sunday, 10th January
@ Playhouse, Sydney Opera House

Gymnasts and circus-people are freaky. So are beatboxers. And drummers. It's all that weird coordination that they have going on. The Tom Tom Crew out-freaky the freaky by combining all of the aforementioned into a single show. It's Aussie hip-hop meets Aussie circus minus the mopey-looking elephants and bearded ladies....

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Wednesday, 10th March - 8PM
@ Metro Theatre

Dirty Projectors, and front-man Dave Longstreth's pre-DP projects, initially copped more than their fair share of flack for being too intellectually obfuscative (read pretentious). Their fourth album Bitte Orca seems to have soothed the critics and it's pretty easy to see why. Dirty Projectors happen to be particularly good at...

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Saturday, 19th December - Sunday, 17th January
@ East Sydney Doctors

Since when do people stand around in doctors' surgery waiting rooms when they're not ill? Since East Sydney Doctors started moonlighting as a contemporary art gallery a year or so ago. Their program of exhibitions are much better than a two-year-old Woman's Day (crossword already completed) and given the nigh-on chronic...

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Thursday, 17th December - 6PM
@ MOP

As usual MOP delivered a stellar exhibition program in 2009. Three of a perfect pair - what a highlight! But it's costly to run a non-commercial gallery. Not that MOP complains. Or asks for the world. It just closes off every year with a brilliant fundraiser. This year it's Bucket...

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Friday, 8th January - Sunday, 17th January
@ Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House

Touted as the dance event of the Sydney Festival, Bale de Rua is coming to town with a whole lot of sweet dance action that smacks of Brazil. Using original music, traditional melodies, dynamic percussion and ridiculously-impressive production design, the company has created a mini break-beat carnivale, big on energy...

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Friday, 19th February - 7PM
@ Parker St, Chinatown

Enough with the lawns and gardens – outdoor cinema could do with some dirtying up. Taking over Parker St in Chinatown for one night only, Gallery 4a’s Cinema Alley is presenting a double-bill with An Estranged Paradise (1999), a feature-length film by one of China’s leading contemporary artists, Yang Fudong, and...

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Friday, 15th January - 1PM
@ Westsyde Connection

Gymnasts and circus-people are freaky. So are beatboxers. And drummers. It's all that weird coordination that they have going on. The Tom Tom Crew out-freaky the freaky by combining all of the aforementioned into a single show. It's Aussie hip-hop meets Aussie circus minus the mopey-looking elephants and bearded ladies.The...

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Tuesday, 19th January - 6PM
@ The Coachman

Apparently Jesse Willesee is going somewhere. Before he does though, there’ll be one last show: YOU PUT A SHIRT ON A HANGOVER AND CALL IT A DAY. And, despite being a self-professed ‘failed poet’, the artist will be launching his debut book of poetry. It is an art show and...

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Wednesday, 27th January - Sunday, 2nd May
@ University of Sydney Art Gallery

Comprising two shows across three spaces, Mirror Mirror Then & Now looks at mirror as material in art from both historical-international and contemporary-Australian perspectives. Curated by Ann Stephen, the exhibitions are a joint project with Brisbane's Institute of Modern Art, and Sydney Uni's University Art Gallery, and in association with...

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Saturday, 6th February - Sunday, 28th March
@ Object Gallery

Object Gallery is reinvigorating the sustainable design/eco-friendly/carbon neutral debate just when it was starting to sound like a whole lot of codswallop - I mean what a life-cycle; from being the preserve of tree-hugging, odorous hippies, it gathered some genuinely concerned folk and then quickly moved on to the realms...

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Thursday, 11th February - Tuesday, 23rd February

Gaffa has built a solid name for itself on the Sydney gallery trail over the last few years. Perched atop the one and only Ding Dong Dang Karaoke Bar, this artist-run space held consistently innovative exhibitions showcasing the work of emerging artists and designers.Now it has seriously outdone itself with...

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Wednesday, 10th February - Saturday, 6th March
@ Stills Gallery

A number of Sydney art spaces have been inserting an exhibition of works by emerging artists into their programming of late. It's good. Got to keep the blood fresh. Stills Gallery is getting doubly fresh, kicking off a fresh new year with a group show of four fresh photo-media artists whose...

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Thursday, 11th February - Saturday, 13th February
@ SBW Stables Theatre

Lady Grey is a clever play. It has a vitality and, indeed, poetry to its language that is often missing from contemporary plays. On a stage bare but for a single wooden chair, a woman (Tanya Burne) grapples with the pain associated with the end of a relationship. In the...

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Wednesday, 12th May - Sunday, 1st August
@ Various Sydney venues

Hands up who likes contemporary art? Put ‘em down. Put ‘em up. Down. Up. Sorry, stay with me. The 17th Biennale of Sydney is almost upon us. Three months of glorious wanderings through room after room of contemporary art, hand selected by David Elliott, famed curator, broadcaster and museum director....

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Friday, 23rd April - Sunday, 9th May
@ The Darlinghurst Theatre

“Anon, Anon! I pray you, remember the porter.” And so you shall, if you chance to find your butt affixed to a seat in the Darlinghurst Theatre before May 10. Danielle King’s triple turn as the Porter/Lady Macduff/gentlewoman in their current production of Macbeth is worth buying a ticket for....

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Monday, 26th April - Saturday, 29th May
@ Drama Theatre, Opera House

Honor (Wendy Hughes) and George (William Zappa) have been married for 32 years. Honor, an accomplished (and published) poet when they met, gave up her career to support George’s ascent into journalistic glory and to raise their daughter, Sophie (Yael Stone). When Claudia, an attractive, 28-year-old journalist and would-be novelist...

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Friday, 30th April - 11PM - Friday, 16th July - 11PM
@ Newtown Theatre

The south end of King Street in Newtown is not the nicest of places to find oneself late in the evening, except of course if one is looking for a little spooking. Fortunately, after a solidly entertaining first season, Theatre of Blood is returning to the foyer of the Newtown...

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Saturday, 15th May - Saturday, 5th June
@ SBW Stables Theatre

In an Oklahoman hotel room foreboding seediness, Agnes, a fortysomething diner waitress with a face sharp from years of masking misery with vodka and crack, trades the washed-out hospital green of her waitress’ uniform for denim shorts and a white tank top; work is out, time to unwind. Fearing the...

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Monday, 5th July - Saturday, 31st July
@ CarriageWorks

Winterland is Sydney's coolest festival. Get it? Coolest? Winterland? Yep, awesome. There's just nothing like a good kitschy pun. Especially when said kitschy pun is accompanied by ice skating, mulled wine, German bratwurst, Italian hot chocolate (that's the thick one), markets curated by the Finders Keepers, live music, ice discos, karaoke, a crafternoon and oh so much more wintery goodness. Throughout July, CarriageWorks is celebrating winter in Sydney by making it good and European-like. The venue is just about the coldest place in the city as it is, so bust out your mittens and join us on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

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Thursday, 1st July - Sunday, 4th July
@ Drama Theatre, Opera House

Hofesh Shechter's choreography is a collision of movement styles that draws on club dancing, militant street revolutions and contemporary dance, all set to a self-composed cinematic score played live on stage.

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Wednesday, 14th July - Saturday, 7th August
@ New Theatre

Don't fret, despite what the name implies, New Directions is not a hippy camp; it's the New Theatre's annual mini-season dedicated to showcasing the best contemporary writing for the theatre.

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Tuesday, 6th July - Sunday, 1st August
@ Sydney Theatre

Tucked away in their scrappy summerhouse, the Tyrone family faces itself. It is a slow, mournful composition that only works with pitch-perfect performances, which Robyn Nevin and William Hurt deliver.

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Friday, 6th August - Friday, 27th August
@ Wharf 2, Wharf Theatre

The STC Education program's presentation of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors is funny. Making the most of Shakespeare’s wit, director Charmian Gradwell, has the fresh-faced Residents (STC's resident company of young-ish actors) slapstick around a clever cardboard Ephesus in full and happy command of the text. Two sets of identical twins...

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Tuesday, 17th August - Saturday, 25th September
@ Sydney Theatre Company

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company is theatrical genius. This ensemble performance is of a standard rarely seen and the play itself is brilliantly written - clever, funny and poignant in relatively equal measures.

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Tuesday, 14th September - Saturday, 25th September
@ CarriageWorks

The clown is always a knife-edge character in some way or another - and these ones may be too uncomfortable to watch.

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Sunday, 10th October - 8PM
@ Riverside Theatre

National Theatre Live is being widely embraced, even hailed as groundbreaking, for opening up the hallowed halls of the theatre to a much larger audience. Helen Mirren plays the title role in a Ted Hughes free-verse translation of Racine's text, seen on screen by over 50,000 people.

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Friday, 15th October - Sunday, 7th November
@ db project space

Because we are a warm and welcoming city, not ensconced in parochialism or afraid of the awesomeness of outsiders, we will throw our arms wide and embrace Joseph Breikers, a young artist fella from Brisbane exhibiting in Sydney for the very first time. Breikers works across sculpture, video, performance as...

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Thursday, 21st October - Saturday, 13th November
@ Old Fitzroy Theatre

Hot Young Female Artist meets mysterious but alluring stranger. Said stranger-cum-muse sparks creative rush but causes upset between Nina (artist) and Sam (her boyfriend). “An electrifying new Australian play about passion, fidelity and the creative mind”.Flightfall is the first full-length play by new Australian playwright Emily Calder. It features a...

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Thursday, 9th December - 6PM
@ Roller

Guaranteed to provoke imagery of all manner of shiny, gadgets, post-apocalyptic wastelands, robo-machine-zombie cops and witty word play, The Future is a gold mine for 2D visionaries.

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Saturday, 29th January - 8PM
@ Becks Bar

Closing night at the Beck's Festival Bar is going to be mad. The phenomenal Burden brothers are bringing their techno genius Octave One to Australia for the very first time. Hailing from Detroit, Octave One are techno innovators. Having toured the globe for over 20 years with DJ set and...

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