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Culture and the arts

Australia’s cultural and artistic scene reflects the nation’s unique blend of established traditions and new influences. It is the product of an ancient landscape that is home to both the world’s oldest continuous cultural traditions and a rich mix of migrant cultures.

Australian governments at all levels are committed to supporting the arts and preserving, promoting and expanding the nation’s cultural heritage—whether through tangible items such as paintings, books, oral histories or natural history specimens, or intangibles reflected in traditions and custom.

The total size of Australia’s arts and related industries sector is estimated at $32 billion.

Did you know?

The Australia Council is the Australian Government’s arts funding and advisory body. It directly supports young, emerging and established artists as well as new and established arts organisations. The Council provides more than 1700 grants throughout Australia each year to artists and arts organisations involved in community cultural development, dance, literature, music, new media arts, theatre, visual arts/crafts and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander arts.

Australia has a vibrant cultural and artistic life and all forms of the visual and performing arts have strong followings.

According to one recent survey, almost 13 million (88 per cent) of adult Australians attend a cultural event or performance every year. The most popular art form is film, attended by about 70 per cent of the population each year. More than 26 per cent attend a popular music concert; 25 per cent go to an art gallery or museum;
19 per cent see an opera or musical; 18 per cent attend live theatre; 11 per cent attend a dance performance; and 9 per cent attend a classical music concert.

Visual arts

Visual artists play a vital role in shaping Australia’s image. In the early 1970s, the works of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists attracted international attention. The transfer of mythological Dreamtime designs from sand paintings to boards and canvases by elders of the Northern Territory Pintupi people was one of many initiatives that have created new connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

During the 1980s and 1990s acclaimed artists such as Rover Thomas and Emily Kngwarreye painted contemporary art that remains grounded in the spiritual traditions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.

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There are an estimated 54.9 million objects and artworks located in Australia’s museums, and national and state libraries hold 11.3 million items.

The Heidelberg School of the 1890s was the first significant art movement in Australia. Artists such as Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts painted an Australia that captured life in the country in the late 19th and early 20th century. Their paintings remain an important part of Australia’s cultural landscape and provide a bridge to the country’s past.

While the Heidelberg School and its nationalist painters were mainly Melbourne-based, it was in Sydney that the early modernist movement started, with painters such as Nora Simpson and Grace Cossington-Smith.

The emergence of symbolic surrealists such as Sidney Nolan, Arthur Boyd and Albert Tucker introduced a new dimension into Australian art, with Nolan focusing on Australian icons, especially the legendary bushranger Ned Kelly. Other notable artists of the mid to late twentieth century include Russell Drysdale, John Olsen, Margaret Olley, Fred Williams, Howard Arkley, Margaret Preston, Jeffrey Smart, Clifton Pugh, William Dobell and Brett Whiteley.

Australia’s contemporary visual artists tell the story of a different Australia. Artists such as William Robinson, Tracey Moffat and Rosella Namok use many media—including photography, sculpture, installation, drawing and performance art—to produce works that reflect issues confronting contemporary Australia, including environmental problems, urban alienation and changes within the community.

Performing arts

See caption below

Indigenous performers at the Berunga Festival, Northern Territory.

Australia’s performing arts are full of energy, originality and diversity. Companies such as Circus Oz and Legs on the Wall and Indigenous groups such as Bangarra Dance Theatre and the Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre are acclaimed around the world for the quality of their productions.

Australian dance is renowned for its exuberance. Major companies such as the Australian Ballet and Sydney Dance Company tour regularly, with a diverse repertoire of Australian and international work. Australian choreographers and dancers such as Lucy Guerin, Gideon Obarzanek and Maggie Sietsma produce contemporary work that is finding new audiences through seasons at nightclubs and other unconventional venues.

Australian music has been greatly enriched by post-war immigration and covers an astonishing range. Virtuoso guitarist Slava Grigoryan, born in Kazakhstan, explores the Argentinean tango and Brazilian bossa nova, while orchestras such as the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra have world-class status. Violinist Richard Tognetti, pianists Roger Woodward, Geoffrey Tozer and Simon Tedeschi and conductor and violinist Nicholas Milton are familiar faces on Australian stages and in the world’s concert halls.

Did you know?

According to a 2005 report prepared by the Australia Council, more than 2.9 million Australians are involved in some form of paid or unpaid work relating to the arts and culture. Of those who received payment, more than 185 000 people were involved in writing, 239 000 in design and 183 000 in visual arts. Of those who did not receive payment, more than 580 000 were involved in event organisation, 597 000 in the visual arts and 336 000 in writing. 

Opera Australia, the national company, is the third-busiest opera company in the world; it has as its home the spectacular Sydney Opera House. The legacy of operatic legends such as Dame Nellie Melba and Dame Joan Sutherland has been handed down to stars such as Deborah Riedel, Lisa Gasteen and Yvonne Kenny.

Australia is well known for its original rock and pop music with solid popular foundations set by artists such as the Easybeats, AC/DC, INXS, Paul Kelly and Midnight Oil. The national youth radio station Triple J actively promotes emerging Australian talent. New artists such as Missy Higgins, Jet, the Waifs, Wolfmother and Ben Lee are starting to enjoy international acclaim. The Wiggles have won an enthusiastic following amongst children in many countries.

Each Australian state has a major theatre company in addition to many smaller companies and theatre groups.

The Australian Government is committed to ensuring that regional communities can develop and sustain a vibrant cultural life that strengthens community identity and wellbeing and encourages broad participation.

Australian writing

The history of Australian literature started with the storytelling of Indigenous Australians and continued with the oral stories of convicts arriving in Australia in the late 18th century. As the new colony grew, these stories and experiences were increasingly recorded, laying the foundations for a uniquely Australian storytelling tradition.

Some of the early works have remained part of the Australian canon, including Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life, the short stories and bush ballads of Henry Lawson, and Andrew ‘Banjo’ Paterson’s poems, including the classics ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and ‘Waltzing Matilda’. Two important writers in the early 20th century were Miles Franklin (who wrote My Brilliant Career in 1901) and Ethel Richardson, who wrote under the pen name Henry Handel Richardson. Australia has one Nobel Prize for Literature to its credit, with novelist Patrick White receiving the award in 1973.

Notable 20th century Australian novelists include Thomas Keneally (winner of the 1982 Man Booker Prize for Schindler’s Ark); Peter Carey (winner of the Man Booker Prize in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang); DBC Pierre (Peter Warren Finlay) who won the Man Booker Prize in 2003 for Vernon God Little; Kate Grenville; Christopher Koch, Elizabeth Jolly, David Malouf, Christina Stead, Morris West and Tim Winton. Geraldine Brooks won the 2006 Fiction Pulitzer Prize for March.

Contemporary poet Les Murray and non-fiction writers Helen Garner and Robert Dessaix have also received considerable critical acclaim. Of the many expatriate writers who have achieved international recognition yet retain strong ties with Australia, Germaine Greer, Geoffrey Robertson, Shirley Hazzard, Robert Hughes, Clive James and Peter Porter are among the most prominent.

Vibrant fashions

Australia’s reputation as a vibrant, individualist nation is well illustrated through its fashion, which is characterised by a rich and colourful mix of exuberant style.

Australian designers who have received international acclaim include Akira Isogawa, known for the impressive cross-cultural fusion of his work, and Collette Dinnigan, a regular on the international circuit whose high-profile fans include Naomi Watts, Sarah O’Hare, Helena Christensen and Charlize Theron.

There is also a new generation which takes its inspiration from Australia’s surf culture, graffiti, art and childhood dreams, then creates its own unique sense of style with a completely different set of rules. Dynamic new labels include Tsubi, based near Sydney’s Bondi Beach; sass&bide, and Willow, a lingerie-based line that recently debuted its sequin-strewn confections on the international runways.

Film—A Cutting Edge     Sandra Hall

An unassuming comedy called Kenny, about a plumber who installs port-a-loos (portable lavatories), was the big news of Australian film-making in 2006. Made for less than $1 million, it took a healthy $7.3 million at the local box-office and won a bundle of awards for its star, Shane Jacobson, and his brother, Clayton, the film’s director. The Jacobson brothers also wrote the film’s script.

Twenty-five Australian films were produced in the 2005–06 production year, and there were several strong performers, among them Ray Lawrence’s Jindabyne and Rolf de Heer’s Ten Canoes. Lawrence, who proved himself an expert in the crafting of sophisticated ensemble dramas with Lantana (2001), was again working with a strong cast, led by American actress Laura Linney and Ireland’s Gabriel Byrne. The script, freely adapted from a short story by America’s Raymond Carver, was set in Australia’s Snowy Mountains.

De Heer’s film, co-directed by Peter Djigirr, was made in the Northern Territory in collaboration with the Ramingining, a community of Yolngu people in Central Arnhem Land. A re-telling of a tribal myth in the language of the region, it was chosen as Australia’s official entry for consideration in the 2007 Academy Awards Best Foreign Film category. It also won the Special Jury Prize in the 2006 Cannes Film Festival’s Un Certain Regard section.

Although the number of home-grown features increased, local production continued to suffer from a shortage of private investment. And there was a sharp fall in the number of foreign films made in Australia during the year. The industry has seen remarkable technical advances, with the development of major studios in Sydney, Melbourne and on Queensland’s Gold Coast. In the past five years, these complexes have accommodated productions of the size of Mission Impossible: II (2000), Star Wars: Attack of the Clones (2002), The Matrix series and Superman Returns (2006).

Foreign film production in Australia during the five years from 2000 has brought the industry an annual average income of $172 million. But in 2005–06, this run of high-budget productions eased off, as a result of a rise in the Australian dollar, coupled with increased competition from film-making facilities in other countries, and the total fell to just $23 million. This downturn, together with the lack of private investment in local production, prompted the Australian Government to undertake a review of its film tax incentives.

Among most recent foreign productions shot in Australia were the Indian film Salaam Namaste, and adaptations of the children’s classics Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White and Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. Where the Wild Things Are was directed by American director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich).

Internationally, Australian film-makers and performers continue to enjoy great success. The cinematographer Dion Beebe was awarded an Oscar for his work on Memoirs of a Geisha, while Heath Ledger earned a Best Actor nomination for his role in Brokeback Mountain. And Australian director George Miller’s animated musical, Happy Feet, featuring chorus lines of singing and dancing Emperor penguins, was one of 2006’s big hits internationally. In the first three days of its release in the United States, the film took US$42.3 million, narrowly eclipsing the performance of the latest James Bond film, Casino Royale. Happy Feet won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2007.

Sandra Hall is film critic for the Sydney Morning Herald and the author of several books on Australian film and television.

Film industry

The Australian film industry has a reputation for innovation and quality, and for producing unique films with an Australian flavour that have global appeal.

While the industry is modest in international terms, it nevertheless employs about 50 000 people and more than 2000 businesses are involved in film, television and video production. In 2005–06, 32 feature films started production in Australia—25 Australian films, three co-productions and four foreign productions.

Australia’s actors, directors, producers, costume designers, writers, cinematographers and animators are attracting growing international acclaim. Australia’s film and television practitioners are among the best in the world, highlighted by recent international recognition for their skills and achievements. Actors such as Nicole Kidman, Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, Naomi Watts, Health Ledger and Eric Bana have amassed a significant body of work and have won awards, critical acclaim and commercial success. Cinematographers such as Dione Beebe and Andrew Lensie have each won Academy Awards. Award-winning and critically acclaimed film-makers include Bruce Beresford, Peter Weir, Phillip Noyce, Baz Luhrmann and George Miller.

The Australian film industry is one of the oldest in the world. The Story of the Kelly Gang, produced in 1906, is thought to be the world’s first full-length narrative film.

Australian cinema thrived through the silent era but the industry went into a decline in the 1920s. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Australian governments intervened to help the industry and, following the establishment of film funding bodies and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, a new generation of Australian filmmakers emerged.

First to make their mark were films about Australia’s earlier history such as Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), My Brilliant Career (1979), Breaker Morant (1980), and Gallipoli (1981). Other successful films with more contemporary themes included Mad Max (Road Warrior) (1979), which introduced a new international star in Mel Gibson, Paul Hogan’s popular comedy Crocodile Dundee (1986) and the finely crafted films of Melbourne director Paul Cox.

The early 1990s saw the emergence of ‘quirky’ Australian comedies such as Strictly Ballroom (1993), Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) and Muriel’s Wedding (1995). More recent notable films include: Shine (1996), Looking for Alibrandi (2000), Lantana (2001), Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002), Japanese Story (2003) and Look Both Ways (2005).

Australia currently has film co-production treaties with the United Kingdom, Canada, Italy, Ireland, Israel and Germany, and memorandums of understanding with France and New Zealand. Treaties with Singapore and China have been signed, and are expected to become operative in the first half of 2008. A treaty with South Africa is also under negotiation.

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