Arts & Culture

For years, Goulburn writer Nigel Featherstone has been writing about war and death. His libretto The Weight of Light was about a soldier returning to Crookwell from Afghanistan with PTSD, followed by Bodies of Men, an acclaimed novel set mostly in Egypt during World War II. For The Story of the Oars, his gaze has returned home, to a long-forgotten...

Inside the Bega Valley Regional Gallery (BVRG), an exhibition by Melbourne-based artist Eugenia Lim has been set up and expertly lit, highlighting her playful and witty take on Asian-Australian history. But, of course, no-one can see it due to COVID-19 restrictions so the gallery has organised a virtual tour of Lim's work, hoping to keep regional art alive throughout the pandemic....

To say last week was big for Harry Cleverdon would be an understatement. The singer songwriter from Young turned 18 and won the People’s Voice award in the International Songwriting Competition (ISC). The news came through last Thursday night from an elated Harry, who said he was thankful and overjoyed that his song and music video, Hit Me While I’m Down, came...

Have you ever stared into the chaotic depths of Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles and visualised its abstract lines as LEGO pieces? Karen Vincent and her children certainly have, and they brought their vision to life with a tiny, plastic recreation of the original. The National Gallery of Australia has been encouraging art-lovers to get creative in recent weeks with the Stay Home...

Times have been extremely tough for artists in the Bega Valley with the impact of drought, bushfires and the current COVID-19 pandemic. Unable to keep Bega's Spiral Gallery open during the current restrictions, local artists and craftspeople have opened an online members' shop that features paintings, mixed media, ceramics, baskets, clothing, digital prints, linocut prints, jewellery, felted and knitted textiles and recycled...

Six years on from the first proposal to re-purpose the former Goulburn Town Hall, construction on the project is well underway. Despite protracted debate about the merit of the $20 million conversion of the historic Auburn Street site into the Goulburn Performing Arts Centre, excavation work by Zauner Construction is nearly complete, with a tower crane soon to be erected....

With self-isolation in full effect due to COVID-19, there are so many adjustments we have had to make in how we currently live. For artists, the challenge of being able to show their work is immense considering the importance of tactility, materiality and presence of an artwork. With Goulburn Regional Art Gallery closed and public programs halted, they are moving...

Bushfires and the COVID-19 crisis have devastated the folk community across Southern NSW, sweeping aside the likes of the Easter National Folk Festival, what would have been the 25th Cobargo Folk Festival, Nariel Creek, Numeralla and more. For Zena Armstrong, musician and executive director at Cobargo, it's a bittersweet time. Fire obliterated much of the village on New Year's Eve...

It sure is a tough time to be a local independent artist. David Ross Macdonald, Melanie Horsnell and Heath Cullen are full-time musicians and songwriters based in Candelo, a town in the Bega Valley in southeast NSW, who are facing a very different year to what they were expecting due to COVID-19 restrictions. International and national tours have disappeared in...

With the click of a button, we could all help a musician from Young realise his dreams of becoming an international singer-songwriter. The people of the Hilltops region all know Harry Cleverdon. He has grown up entertaining locals with his music in a range of venues – starting out on the streets as a busker at festivals, then it was...

Robert Corkhill spent his life on the land, but his heart sang a different tune: that of bush poetry, stories of the community around him and sheer love of the land. The Boorowa farmer died in 2017, survived by a lively brood of 10 children and his wife Leonie, but has left a further legacy in the form of his...

Moruya's Basil Sellers Exhibition Centre is calling for submissions for its 2021 exhibition program. The arts centre, which opened in February 2019 and is affectionately known as 'the Bas', is currently closed until June 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this period of enforced social isolation provides an opportunity for artists to view it as a quasi artists-in-residence program. Eurobodalla...

Last week, Bronwyn Napiorkowski went to her local doctor to get a script filled. "I sat in the waiting room feeling really vulnerable," she says. "I wasn't showing signs of being sick but I knew people around were and I wished I had brought a face mask with me." When Bronwyn – a qualified art therapist who grew up in Bega and...

"With great sadness and regret," the email from Four Winds Easter Festival begins, "we have decided not to go ahead with the 2020 Easter Festival in Bermagui." The Four Winds Easter Festival joins the growing ranks of cancelled community events around the country because of COVID-19, which was categorised as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation on 11 March....

Sculpture Bermagui was almost a victim of the summer's fires, but considering the art on show at the opening and awards ceremony on 6 March, it's a welcome relief that these remarkable works will be with us to help heal the wounds of an unforgettable summer. From the stage in a packed Bermagui Community Centre, Yuin woman Iris White welcomed...

‘Angels and Waratahs’ is a new exhibition opening at The Hive Queanbeyan on Saturday 14 March. The joint exhibition presents paintings by Major’s Creek artist Jane Ahlquist alongside the earthy ceramics by Queanbeyan’s Galia Shy. The show responds to the torment of the natural environment through the tempestuous summer of bushfires and the nurture of the bush as new growth...