Culture

That night, as the baby fed, I scrolled through old photos on my phone and wondered if you could envy yourself. I saw my face, my body, my hair, from years and even months ago, and felt a painful tightening in my throat and my jaw. I began to resent the phrase I had heard, yet I could not stop repeating it to myself – the mother cut, the mother cut.

The highlights of the major gaming expo PAX West are from indie developers, demonstrating the talent ignored by major studios – and offering some hope for the future.

Many works at this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival ask how  the dream of a creative existence can survive the reality of making a living.

Contemporary artist and Kamilaroi man Reko Rennie combines his Aboriginal identity with his urban coming of age to take on the major artistic institutions of Australia.

Todd Phillips’ Joker: Folie à Deux is a star-crossed and strangely saggy affair, soaked in faux gravitas.

The spa has been on the cards since the end of spring. Before this, like everyone in Queensland, my father dreamt of a pool. Not a big pool. Not a pool for show and not a time-and-money pit, like my brother Angus has. On Saturdays, my brother’s pool requires hours of combing for leaves and the fallen limbs of palms so that, on Sundays, his beautiful, tanned daughters can stretch long and listless beside it, as allergic to the water as cats. My father’s dream was for a small pool of easy maintenance. In the end, the fear of looking showy gave him digestive issues and he couldn’t afford a pool anyway. So, the spa.

In Quiet Resonance at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Korean artist Lee Ufan opens a way of knowing beyond the human self.

The Australian Ballet’s Oscar – an enactment of Oscar Wilde’s life and loves – foregrounds queer desire in a tour de force.

After supposedly quitting television two years ago, Shaun Micallef returns next week with a new show on SBS – although these days he’s more interested in helping younger comics.

Charlie Covell’s brilliant Netflix series Kaos doesn’t so much retell the Greek myths as overthrow their narrative laws to build a new and necessary story.