Recommended

Contemporary artist Fiona Hall questions how Indigenous artists will keep creating works if their remote communities are closed down.

Amnesty International gives its top 2015 human rights award to both Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, and US folksinger Joan Baez.

One of the world's biggest musical producers criticises Sydney's lack of suitable theatres to allow for productions to have viable long runs.

As Rufus Wainwright concludes his Australian tour, Barnaby Smith beholds an artist at a crossroads, who may have to leave pop music behind in order to fulfil his talent.

Photographer Trent Parke uncovers lost memories of his traumatic childhood through his The Black Rose exhibition.

Known as a filmmaker with a singular vision, David Lynch is also a prolific visual artist who has been making complex drawings, photographs and paintings for 50 years. In an Australian first, Queensland's Gallery of Modern Art is staging a survey exhibition of Lynch's artwork. While in Brisbane the enigmatic artist spoke with ABC Arts.

In the spirit of generating cultural debate, ABC Arts Online asked participants of the 2015 All About Women Festival to respond to a series of polemics that feed off the themes of the event. Exploring current issues and eternal problems, the Festival brought together cultural leaders from different sectors to tackle the big ideas shaping gender equality in Australia.

Dance Massive began in 2009 as a biennial festival designed to showcase Australia's diverse dance culture. A collaboration between three Melbourne venues - North Melbourne Arts House, Dancehouse and the Malthouse Theatre - it's proved to be a keeper, drawing our best choreographers and enthusiastic audiences.

Australian feature films have not been doing well at the box office in recent years. Film star Hugo Weaving said yesterday on RN Breakfast that he felt our smaller movie industry would continue to struggle in the US dominated market. But another local actor, Adam Lindblom, says that it's the Asian film market that will be increasingly important down under.
Listen Now

has shaken the hand of any bluesmen who matters and played with many of them. Names like Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson to Tom Waits, Eddie Vedder and Ben Harper; all part of the great American blues lineage. His 2014 CD with Ben Harper won a Grammy, one of many blues gongs Charlie has received over the years. His latest album Duke Joint Chapel was recorded down in Clarksdale Mississippi in the cradle of the blues where he was donating his time and money to an after-school care project in the local blues museum. Charlie's on tour bound for WOMADelaide and the Charlie's tour dates: 03/02/15 Crawley Perth International Arts Festival Australia 03/06/15 Adelaide Womadelaide Australia 03/07/15 - 03/08/15 Port Fairy Port Fairy Folk Music Festival Australia
Listen Now

Since the '90s, Eric San, aka Kid Koala, has challenged audience assumptions that club culture is at its best when there's a crowd facing a DJ spinning and mixing hits out front. San is an artist who likes to defy that convention.

Her early days were split between Sweden and New York City, and her influences ranged from Miles Davis to Yoko Ono and Ari Up. 's distinctive vocals and powerful lyrics are on show on her new album , and Australian audiences are about to see and hear her in concertwith band RocketNumberNinefor the first time. talks to Andrew Ford about beginnings, influences and and where she's at. Australian dates: Feb 28/ March 1: Perth Festival [Festival Gardens] March 6, Melbourne, Arts Centre March 7, Golden Plains Festival in Meredith, VIC March 8 and 9, Womadelaide March 11, Sydney Opera House
Listen Now

Puppets and their peculiar magic have been a recurring theme in this year's Perth Festival, but in Ubu and The Truth Commission puppetry becomes a vehicle to explore the human suffering many endured under Apartheid, writes Alison Croggon.

A massive light and installation display draws thousands of people to Elder Park on the first night of the Adelaide Festival.

Queensland Symphony Orchestra collaborates with offbeat musicians to create a day of experimental concerts, which at times will see the orchestra's sound manipulated "like on a turntable".

Patricia Arquette made some good points about women in her Oscars acceptance speech. It's just a shame it came from inside an industry that repeats a deluge of lies and misnomers about gender and ageing.

Art critic and historian Hal Foster has been one of the key thinkers in the visual arts since his seminal text Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture was published more than three decades ago. It's considered a bible of contemporary cultural criticism. He joins Books and Arts to talk about his life and career, along with some of his ideas and theories, which continue to push boundaries.

Menagerie is a group exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (ACCA) in Melbourne. It explores the representation of animals in art. One of the artists featured in the show is internationally acclaimed artist Patricia Piccinini.Producer Sarah L'Estrange visits Patricia Piccinini's studio in Collingwood, inner-city Melbourne, to discuss the role of animals in her artwork.

From the 1930s to the 1950s anthropologist Norman Tindale travelled Australia taking photos of Aboriginals, part of a project to record a 'dying race.' Indigenous artist Vernon Ah Kee has reclaimed and reframed Tindale's original project by creating powerful images, some of his own forebears.