Culture

Singer-songwriter Fiona Apple’s impressive fifth album, Fetch the Bolt Cutters, is the culmination of her decades-long quest to ‘feel everything’.

With her viral video essays, the somewhat elusive Isabel C delves into the intrigues, triumphs and upsets of the film industry. But her YouTube channel, Be Kind Rewind, also looks at Hollywood’s failings, and how it represents and treats women. “The Oscars have survived through several decades, so I knew they could be a good entry point for both exploring history and the industry’s power structure from a female perspective.”

With today’s sequels and spinoffs often eclipsing their source material, Westworld, now entering its third season, takes the trend to a whole new level – presenting a futurist world of automatons with staggering richness and intricacy.

The shutdowns in the wake of the escalating Covid-19 crisis have forced art establishments to move fast in creating new and innovative ways to keep galleries relevant when their doors are closed to the public.

In his debut novel, The Adversary, Ronnie Scott explores the intense friendships and social rituals of young gay men. Here, he talks about trying to read the unspoken intentions of others, and the unintended consequences of our everyday behaviour. “Of course, it makes sense that people would want to decode others,” Scott says. “Hitching your fate to another person or letting someone into a really private part of your life … is an act of trust.”

If death is a certainty, so is the fact that the Earth is running out of space for cemeteries. Two Australians are trying to design a solution.

A new short story from the award-winning author of Ghost River, Common People and The White Girl.

While Australian artists face challenging times, brilliant work is still being staged.