Concrete Playground

art free Emma White @ the Locksmith Project Space

Thursday, 18th March - Saturday, 27th March
@ Locksmith Gallery

A couple of years ago an empty shopfront with 'Keys Cut' signage re-emerged as an artist-run initiative where artists could show without being obliged to sell, and a bit of funding that meant they could pay exhibitors. Emma White's current show, 'While You Wait', is a nod to the history...

art free ONE hundred

Tuesday, 9th March - Wednesday, 16th June
@ State Library of NSW

David Scott Mitchell’s bequest of his books, papers and pictures to the State Library in 1907 came with the condition that it be housed and displayed in its own wing. When it opened in 1910, it provided the first public collection of Australian and Oceanic history through original, primary sources,...

art free Susan O'Doherty: Perfect Woman

Tuesday, 30th March - Saturday, 17th April
@ NG Art Gallery

Investigated in this show is the 'perfect woman' as a construct, both psychically and as an assemblage. Out of dissected dolls, furnishings, often-strange appliances and household products from the '40s, '50s and '60s, O'Doherty makes mordant visual puns: a set of scales as torso in The Perfect Weight, a light-bulb...

free Vintage and Retro Sale

Friday, 11th June - 12PM - Sunday, 13th June - 10AM
@ Hibernian House

A lot of strategies exist for vintage shopping — closing your eyes and feeling for fabrics that won't give you hives, going to wealthy suburbs, having a good tailor, saved searches all over the internet, pure persistence — to which can be added: getting a collection of inner-city fashion kids to drag the...

art free The Real Refuses

Sunday, 11th April - 12PM - Sunday, 18th April - 12PM
@ TAP Gallery

Like a much much more labour-intensive profile picture, a portrait is how a person has thought someone should be seen. This is a horrible analogy, but, frankly, so too are some of the paintings at The Real Refuses. TAP Gallery, fantastically, are for the 14th year running putting up what...

free performing play think Sydney Writers' Festival

Saturday, 15th May - Sunday, 23rd May
@ Walsh Bay

Under the rubric 'Read, Rethink, Respond' this year's Sydney Writers' Festival brings together authors across cultures and continents to cast a light on what's happening right now, and they seem to be a pretty confronting and contentious lot. It's not a competition to see who's the most ink-stained, it's about...

art play Frock Stars

Tuesday, 27th April - Sunday, 29th August
@ Powerhouse Museum

Australian Fashion Week is, like probably more than a few of the models who'll be a part of it, turning 16 this year — and it's being thrown a monster birthday party that's also kind of a parent-teacher night. In typically immersive style, the Powerhouse Museum's Frock Stars: Inside Australian Fashion...

art free safARI

Wednesday, 5th May - Sunday, 30th May
@ Inner City ARIs

Biennale, Schmiennale. Okay, fine, I don't really mean that, but while famous people are putting on big shows at buildings with landmark status and getting schoolbusloads of guests of the "I also saw the Archibald" variety, it's awesome that little tiny galleries continue bringing you plastic cups of wine and...

art free play Fashion Forward Festival

Friday, 7th May - Sunday, 9th May
@ Paddington Town Hall

Holding this in Paddington Town Hall is fitting (har) for several reasons: (1) FASHAN is SRS BIZNISS; (2) it's based around community participation, even if not of the 'objection to proposed development' type; (3) if you're in that area, you're probably already paying attention to your outfit. Civic-mindedness goes beyond...

art free Asahi Silver+Black

Tuesday, 4th May - Saturday, 8th May
@ amBUSH Gallery

Exhibition crossed with pop-up store, this art and retail initiative is refreshingly (cold beer is delicious) literal. Those colours (colour me delighted to have the chance to drink delicious Asahi), silver and black, are the ones that the things on display actually have. Sculpture, cutlery, a lovely, meditative 3-D film...

art free performing Pecha Kucha nights @ SuperDeluxe

Sunday, 16th May - 1PM - Thursday, 29th July - 7PM
@ SuperDeluxe @ Artspace

Not quite the weekend but clearly you're going to go out? The Thursday dilemma. A good festival assuages a great deal of school-night guilt purely on grounds of participation in the rich cultural life of your city or whatever, but when your event of choice is definitely educational, too,...

art free Kent State: Four Decades Later

Thursday, 13th May - Sunday, 25th July
@ University of Sydney Art Gallery

"This sounds like a retrospective. But do I admit I don't know who Kent State is? Why don't I know who Kent State is? Oh crap, I am totally festival-addled." Turns out, while I definitely am festival-addled, Kent State is not a person but a university in the US where...

art free performing Leeloo presents DisBand

Thursday, 27th May - Sunday, 30th May
@ amBUSH Gallery

Sweetness and illustrations of girls with rosy cheeks and emerging Australian artists and craftspeople and who doesn't love the Beatles? The online community and store Leeloo are putting on what's probably the cutest show of the year. There are paintings and pictures and a pop-up store and a play on...

art free bams & ted

Thursday, 3rd June - Sunday, 27th June
@ Locksmith Project Space

"You're to come away at once, out of danger. I've got a motor-car and a basket of strawberries and a bottle of Château Peyraguey — which isn't a wine you've ever tasted, so don't pretend. It's heaven with strawberries." Lord Sebastian Flyte also has loads of charm and country-house, smart...

art free Inside Out

Saturday, 5th June - Sunday, 25th July
@ Object Gallery

In my experience, tiny little things are usually either adorable (e.g., kittens, outfits for small children, cupcakes) or something to do with science: bacteria and atoms and the level of interest you have in hearing a recitation of the digits of pi. And some wonderful things are little and smart...

art free Matt Huynh: Asperatus

Tuesday, 1st June - 6PM
@ The Skeleton Gallery, Australian Museum

I often wish I'd done more Latin. Anyone who had could explain much more elegantly that the name of this show refers to being roughed up by turbulence and is a term for a newly classified kind of cloud, and they would also be able to talk knowledgeably about the...

play Becky Sharp's Vanity Fair Vintage Markets

Saturday, 12th June - 10AM - Saturday, 11th December - 10AM
@ Marrickville Town Hall

Lovely things can be even lovelier when someone else paid full price for them, another someone else restored them and brought them together for sale and yet another someone else wants them but isn't as quick as you. At these vintage markets you'll find authentic period garments as well as amazing designer pieces in near-perfect condition.

art free Mark Kimber & Polixeni Papapetrou

Tuesday, 8th June - Saturday, 3rd July
@ Stills Gallery

The two shows on now at Stills Gallery are by established, mature photographers creating their own dreamworlds and representing fantasy and identity in ways that provoke enthusiasm as childlike as their mysterious subjects and a Lacanian freak-out.Mark Kimber's All That Glisters series is framed in smoothly finished black and mounted...

art music performing think The Great Gaga Debate

Saturday, 12th June - 7PM
@ Serial Space

In the fine traditions of extracurricular activities and Madonna (no, we are not linking that for you), Serial Space has assembled a crack team of smart people from the local arts and music community to decide once and for all "Is Lady Gaga an empowered female pop icon or an...

art Alfred Stieglitz: the Lake George years

Tuesday, 22nd June - Sunday, 5th September
@ AGNSW

This is the first significant Australian showing of Alfred Stieglitz's work and contains more than 150 of the finest prints of his photos. Alfred Stieglitz is important in a way that's kind of hard to explain. That's partly because he did so many different things as a photographer and partly...

art free Die To Look Good Sample & Clearance Sale

Thursday, 8th July - 4PM - Sunday, 11th July - 10AM
@ China Heights

Ever broken down and cried in Incu or Pretty Dog? Justified why someone might pay $100 for a cotton tank with reeeeally well-shaped arm-holes? This sale of excellent and innovative local designer fashions will make you feel better.

art free Yaeli Ohana: Games We Play

Tuesday, 29th June - Monday, 12th July
@ NG Art Gallery

Yaeli Ohana's work comes from a realisation that the strategies we learn in play as children come to shape how we approach adult challenges. "We all play games in our lives, whether we admit it or not."

art free Brook Andrew: The Cell

Friday, 9th July - Saturday, 18th September
@ Sherman Contemporary Art Foundation

You'll need to take off your shoes, store anything sharp and change into one of the hooded suits that hang beside [i]The Cell[/i] before you're allowed in.

free play Big Fashion Sale

Thursday, 22nd July - Sunday, 25th July
@ BJB studios

A great way to plump up your wardrobe without deflating your wallet (too much), this sale-to-end-all-sales features every well-known designer under the Southern Cross trafficking their threads at ridiculously reasonable prices.

art free Last Words

Thursday, 15th July - Saturday, 28th August
@ 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

Seven local and international artists of varying backgrounds explore the blurring of cultural boundaries in this age of diversity and globalisation.

art Object Gallery Spring Series

Tuesday, 27th July - Friday, 8th October
@ Various Sydney venues

Not so much exhibitions as events and community interventions, this 10-week community arts event will feature a 'ride-on' dinner in local, shared and sustainable style, tours of tucked-away studio spaces, a special Kino screening in the gallery, craft sessions and much more.

art think Why We Love Making Books

Monday, 2nd August - 7PM
@ Berta

See and hear "a panel of self-confessed tactility-freaks" talk about their taste for small-press publishing and the value of using all the senses in reading books as well as making them.

art Sydney Design 2010

Saturday, 31st July - Sunday, 15th August
@ Various Sydney venues

This 16-day festival is a city-wide celebration of designers of every genre and, with the cream of Australian and international design on show, it promises to be the best yet. With a theme like 'tell us a story' the avenues for exploration are endless - travel stories told with lace, insights into the rich histories of re-invented objects and shaping the stories of the future with sustainable design. Held in various venues around Sydney, check out the website for where and when you can check out the Young Blood and Designboom markets, find out about Wallpaper, listen to tales of old couches and learn how to make jewelry whist swigging champagne.

art free Don't Tell Nanna

Wednesday, 28th July - Wednesday, 25th August
@ Horus & Deloris

This is a show that asks you to be complicit with it. Right there in the title, see? Kind of like having a giggle about doing something a bit mischievous, but with a sense that it's still important to be nice. Nanna might not want to see her granddaughter's tights...

art free A Ciel Ouvert

Thursday, 5th August - Tuesday, 24th August
@ Monstrosity Gallery

William-Guillame Saussay's big, energetic, squiggle-circuits are very 80s New York - like abstract cityscapes seen from above, their palette oscillates between energetic and virulent.

art performing Ken Unsworth: The House of Blue Leaves

Saturday, 21st August - Tuesday, 24th August
@ AGNSW

Despite the potential reputational consequences to me as a researcher, I am shocked to report to you that Ken Unsworth does not have a Wikipedia page*. Yes, an Australian artist who has been showing for more than 40 years, is collected in significant public galleries and has shown at Biennales...

play Meet, Sip and Swallow

Monday, 16th August - Monday, 30th August
@ The Corner House

Well-adjusted Bondi small venues the Shop and Wine Bar and The Corner House are joining forces to put on fortnightly sessions with Australian winemakers, where you get to hear about the vintages from the winemakers themselves, try a few, have some snacks and take some home.

art free performing Project 5

Friday, 20th August - Sunday, 22nd August
@ Cockle Bay Wharf

Is art a spectator sport? Well this weekend it will be, when renowned Australian artists descend on Cockle Bay Wharf to make art in an improvised open-to-the-public studio.

performing play Yellow Moon

Sunday, 5th September - Sunday, 26th September
@ Belvoir St Theatre Downstairs

A swaggering hero with something to prove and an aloof maiden for the winning are good, solid elements of a ballad, and as 'The Ballad of Leila and Lee', Yellow Moon has these down in it's 17-year-old 'Stag' Lee (John Shrimpton) and Silent Leila (Layla Estasy). There's adventure and romance...

art film free travel music performing play think This Is Not Art

Thursday, 30th September - Monday, 4th October
@ Newcastle

This festival is actually five festivals, bringing together acts and panels and talks and fairs and workshops and installations and gigs from emerging and innovative culture-makers from around the nation in a celebration of all things young, creative and experimental.

art free think StereoTyped

Saturday, 4th September - Sunday, 26th September
@ Object Gallery

Get excited, inner dorks who like fonts: this exhibition looks at sound design and typography and how they come together in contemporary practice, questioning received attitudes about design and designers in the process.

art free Two Exhibitions at MOP

Thursday, 24th March - Sunday, 10th April
@ MOP Projects

Old-fashioned techniques and historical allusions meet contemporary technologies and visualities to play critically with ideas about how women are frightening but can't do science.

art free music Matthew Hopkins: Heads

Wednesday, 23rd March - Saturday, 16th April
@ Gallery 9

Anxious yet exuberant investigations into consciousness, reality and their expansions from painter-sculptor-composer-musician-video artist-overachiever Matthew Hopkins.

play Rosemount Australian Fashion Week

Monday, 2nd May - Friday, 6th May
@ Overseas Passenger Terminal Circular Quay

Like fashion weeks everywhere, RAFW is an exciting intersection of fashion as art and fashion as celebrity culture, with basically everything and everyone in the general area of it being a photo-op waiting to get blogged. 56 Australian designers will be showing their Spring/Summer 2011 collections to local and international buyers, press and people who've finagled invitations or are famous. Luckily, if none of the aforementioned include you, the collections will appear on various fashiony blogs and websites before you can say 'get me out of these shoes. Now.'

free Young Australian Designers Market

Saturday, 15th January - Saturday, 18th June
@ Paddington Town Hall

Young locals make and/or source the components of your potential future outfits.

performing That One Story

Friday, 29th April - Saturday, 7th May
@ Factory Theatre

Everyone has a best story, the one that gets them out of (or into) trouble. See some of the talent of the Sydney Comedy Festival alongside regular participants tell theirs.

performing British Liaisons

Tuesday, 3rd May - Saturday, 21st May
@ Sydney Opera House

Love, strategy, wit and the general sense of how amazing it is that people can do that with their bodies in The Australian Ballet's triple-header tribute to British dance.

art free play 3 Exhibitions

Thursday, 5th May - Sunday, 22nd May
@ MOP

Three talented Australian artists showcase their new works at MOP

art free performing play New Contemporary Galleries

Saturday, 21st May - Wednesday, 2nd May
@ AGNSW

There's a new floor of the AGNSW and it's filled with work from The Kaldor Family Collection, one of the most significant private collections of contemporary art ever.

art free play MCA Zine Fair

Sunday, 22nd May - 11AM
@ Museum of Contemporary Art

Get your lo-fi heaps legit design and writing fix with the hand-made, limited-run fun of self-publishing at the MCA and Sydney Writers' Festival's annual Zine Fair.

art free music play Finders Keepers Autumn/Winter Markets

Friday, 20th May - Saturday, 21st May
@ CarriageWorks

The Finders Keepers Markets have become something of a byword for adorableness, and with a focus on sustainability, and the artists and designers repping and reaping the profits of their own work, it's basically guilt free. This Autumn/Winter outing of Finders Keepers' biannual Sydney visits is prepared for the cold, with KnitKnit's DIY kits for woolly accessories for first-time knitters and Puddin' Head homewares so your room looks its prettiest while you lean back against your Ourlieu cushions covered in fabrics printed with hand-drawn designs. And that is before you start thinking about the fashion and jewellery options, of which there are enough to keep you busy for the whole of either day, and the artists and illustrators vending their wares, of which ditto. Plus bands, if the above was not already enough to warm your heart and your toesies.

art free Garth Knight: Bestiary

Tuesday, 10th May - Saturday, 28th May
@ Iain Dawson Gallery

Photographs of delicate, shiny creepy-crawlies made of jewels are illustrations of the impossible specimens in this contemporary bestiary.

art free When I Grow Up I Want To Be An Artist

Monday, 6th June - 6PM
@ Fraser Studios

Queen Street Studios host a panel of creators and curators from theatre, art and film in a discussion on how to sustain a creative practice in Sydney.

art free 3 Exhibitions at Firstdraft

Wednesday, 18th May - Wednesday, 15th June
@ Firstdraft Gallery

Personal, sexual and artistic identities are explored through representations of place in three shows, by Helena Leslie, Paul Williams and Drew Pettifer.

art free performing When Good Curators Go Bad & Sixty Kilograms

Monday, 23rd May - Friday, 3rd June
@ MOP

Performance and life cross over here in shows by artists who push the boundaries of what constitutes art.

art free Light Sculptures

Friday, 27th May - Monday, 13th June
@ Circular Quay

Circular Quay gets its evenings lit up by 40 light sculptures - site-specific installations that will change how you see the city.

art free Social Sculpture

Saturday, 2nd April - Saturday, 18th June
@ Anna Schwartz Gallery, CarriageWorks

The show, which might look like a jumble of videos and of stuff comes together as something meaningful and involving with the application of a little time and contemplation.

music performing OFWGKTA

Tuesday, 31st May - 10PM
@ Sydney Opera House

For those concerned with what is and is not 'swag' and people wondering about the future of humanity, ladies and gentlemen: Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All.

music OFWGKTA

Sunday, 5th June - 8PM
@ The Hi-Fi Brisbane

For those concerned with what is and is not 'swag' and people wondering about the future of humanity, ladies and gentlemen: Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All.

art free Tell Me Tell Me: Australian and Korean Art 1976-2011

Thursday, 16th June - Wednesday, 24th August
@ National Art School

Korean and Australian art co-curated by the MCA and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea for the Korea-Australia Year of Friendship. Hugs all round!

art film music performing Vivid Creative Sydney at the MCA

Friday, 10th June - Sunday, 12th June
@ Museum of Contemporary Art

Vivid Creative Sydney take over the MCA for an educational (in a fun way) weekend of film, music and adventure.

art free Four Shows at Firstdraft

Wednesday, 8th June - Sunday, 26th June
@ Firstdraft

Sydney's oldest ARI showing some of Sydney's newest artwork. You know the drill. This time round it's Penelope Benton, Alison Locke, Tully Arnott with Charles Dennington, and Samuel Bruce.

art The Poetry of Drawing

Saturday, 18th June - Sunday, 4th September
@ Art Gallery of NSW

Beautiful drawings of beautiful women by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood: way more revolutionary than you'd think, but just as lovely.

art free Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted

Thursday, 7th July - Saturday, 13th August
@ Chalk Horse

In their second group show since the re-open earlier this year, Chalk Horse show that though they've gone commercial they are definitely still the indie conceptual darlings of yore.

art free New exhibitions at Gaffa

Thursday, 30th June - Tuesday, 12th July
@ Gaffa Gallery

All four shows in this set of exhibitions at Gaffa are, in one way or another, about place. How we construct it, how we occupy it, how it shapes the way we think.

art free Naeem Rana and Nusra Qureshi: The way you look at me

Friday, 8th July - Saturday, 20th August
@ 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

Two Pakistani born arists investigate and document their experience as migrants in Australia using traditional art forms adapted within the context of contemporary art, society and politics.

free Big Fashion Sale

Friday, 12th August - Sunday, 14th August
@ District 01

Virtuously support the Australian fashion industry while honing your overall shopping fitness.

free play On Sale! Shops and Shopping

Monday, 8th August - Sunday, 30th October
@ State Library of NSW

Take a sneak peek into Sydney's shopping trolley with this department-store style setup of advertising, packaging and photos.

art free The Paper Attic

Saturday, 30th July - Sunday, 25th September
@ Object Gallery

A room full of painstakingly made paper replicas of junk call into question our ideas about use and value.

art free Warwick Thornton: Stranded

Wednesday, 7th September - Saturday, 8th October
@ Stills Gallery

Indigenous filmmaker and artist Warwick Thornton casts himself in a recreation of the Crucifixion in a series of stills and a 3D film.

art music PAN Magazine Launch: Issue 2

Wednesday, 28th September - 7PM
@ The World Bar

For those who like independent publications to read in their small bars, PAN Magazine laughs off the sophomore blues with its second issue.

film Antenna International Documentary Film Festival

Wednesday, 5th October - Sunday, 9th October
@ Chauvel Cinema

We are all documenting all the time now. This festival is both a state of the nation on what documentary is and does now and a space for consideration of what it can be and do in the future.

performing Claudia O'Doherty: What Is Soil Erosion?

Tuesday, 18th October - Sunday, 30th October
@ Belvoir Downstairs

Claudia O'Doherty explores the most pressing issue of our time, Soil Erosion, in an hour-long experience of the 26-hour TV show 'they' won't let her make.

performing Money Shots: STC Next Stage

Friday, 30th September - Saturday, 15th October
@ Wharf 2, Wharf Theatre

Five 15-minute plays threaded together by the presence of money as a determinant of character and action showcase contemporary Australian playwriting as part of STC's Next Stage program.

art October Shows at Firstdraft

Wednesday, 12th October - Sunday, 30th October
@ Firstdraft

Karla Dickens on NRL, darts with Diana Smith and a chance to catch up on your laundry courtesy of Tega Brain. It's art. No, really.

art House

Saturday, 15th October - Sunday, 5th February
@ Museum of Sydney

Big beautiful photos of things from big beautiful houses provide a lesson in Australian history and a reflection on the inherent meaningfulness of objects.

performing Titus Andronicus

Monday, 17th October - Saturday, 5th November
@ ATYP Studios, The Wharf

Major trigger warnings for the Shakespeare play that reads most like an Odd Future track.

art performing Fiona McGregor: Water Series

Tuesday, 1st November - Sunday, 20th November
@ Artspace

Fiona MacGregor uses her body as an instrument to investigate the complex and vital relation we have with water.

art Sophia Hewson: The Longing - It's Like Vulcan But Sad

Thursday, 27th October - Sunday, 20th November
@ Chalk Horse

Sophia Hewson's contemporary take on the representation of Jesus, the Virgin Mary and St Teresa of Avila puts a Pop-influenced aesthetic under the durable seriousness of resin, embedding stylistic and attitudinal complications into works that question belief and sincerity and what happens when they are lacking.

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