Tag: arts

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Footscray West Writers Fest

Poster for Footscray West Writers Fest in purple and yellow.

Oh hey it’s a new festival on the block! I’m doing a couple of things at the inaugural Footscray West Writers Fest, one filthy and one frugal. But which is which?

First Floor Fantasy
Saturday 29 March 2025
7:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Harley & Rose Upstairs
572 Barkly St, Footscray VIC 3012
(Please note: Access is via stairs)
Tickets $15, book here

Indulge in an evening of quickfire erotic storytelling by local authors, including Jinghua Qian, Thuy On, Rochelle Siemienowicz, Aud Pitch.

Poster for First Floor Fantasy.

Closing Night Event: Stories from the Belly of the West
Sunday 30 March 2025
4 pm to 10 pm
Harley & Rose
572 Barkly St, Footscray VIC 3012
Tickets $30, book here

Join us for the festival’s unforgettable closing night event, Stories from the Belly of the West, where six talented authors share brand-new site-specific works after taking up the most ramshackle writers-in-residence program imaginable. Jinghua Qian takes us to Savers, Emilie Collyer to Rex Hairdressing, Sam Elkin to WeFo Dog Park, Tina Cartwright to The South Road Coin Laundry, Alice Pung to Cheaper By Miles, and Rijn Collins takes us under the Westgate Bridge, with each tale offering a fresh perspective on the vibrant heart of the community. Don’t miss this celebration of place, creativity, and storytelling to mark the festival’s finale. Enjoy music from The Orbweavers during the event.

Check out the whole festival program, it’s a banger with events featuring Maxine Beneba Clarke, André Dao, Ernest Price, Liz Crash, Najma Sambul, Benjamin Millar, the students of Footscray High School, and basically all your fave westies. Amazing work from Jess, Donita and Reem!

* I buy all my leather from Savers so …

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Unison Symposium | West Space

I’m doing a reading of my infamous anti-grant essay at West Space’s Unison Symposium next week, which features a whole heap of artists: Aida Azin, Archie Barry, Torika Bolatagici, Gabi Briggs, Sebastian Henry-Jones, Indra Liusuari, Lisa Radford, Diego Ramirez, Leen Rieth, Iran Sanadzadeh, Chloë Sobek, Aziz Sohail, Salote Tawale, Star Wanyama and me.

Unison Symposium
Saturday 5 August 2023
11 am to 3 pm
Music Market, Collingwood Yards
2/35 Johnston Street, Collingwood VIC 3066
$20/$12/free | book here

Image shows a white gallery room with natural coloured floor boards, hanging with varied artworks including a large textile with black diamond patterns and several digital screens.

Unison, a group exhibition curated by Sebastian Henry-Jones, West Space, Collingwood Yards, 2023. Installation view. Photo: Janelle Low.

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Review: Loaded, Malthouse Theatre

For The Saturday Paper, I reviewed the long-awaited stage adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’ Loaded which is playing at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne.

Danny Ball plays Ari in Malthouse Theatre’s 2023 production of Loaded. Photo: TS Pubicity / Tamarah Scott.

Ari’s casual assertion that he’s a wog, not white, scorns millennia of Western empires claiming Greek epistemology as an intellectual forebear while systemically deorientalising it. This feels particularly salient for how homoeroticism in Greek antiquity is absorbed into the lineage of anglophone gay culture today. That troubled relationship to history and lineage is also a recurring trope in migrant narratives, as the point of origin recedes into a romantic homeland fading into the horizon, or becomes a risk and a burden, a chorus of voices clamouring for tribute. Or a third thing: a ship with new parts but the same name.

It’s really interesting to see all the different iterations of this story (I also reviewed the audio play in 2020) and be pushed to tease apart my responses and figure out what’s in the work vs what’s changed in the world or the presentation context or my point of view. A good exercise as a critic!

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Club Critique | Emerging Writers’ Festival


And further on criticism, I’m chairing this panel at Emerging Writers’ Festival and the National Writers’ Conference featuring Prithvi Varatharajan, Dan Hogan, Jess Ho and Vyshnavee Wijekumar.

How and why should one write deeply engaged, contemplative, and authentic criticism? From literature to food, music to screen, join these writers as they consider the purpose and scope of criticism, the role criticism plays in the arts, as well as hopes and ambitions for the future of the form.

Club Critique
Saturday 17 June 2023
12:30pm to 1:30 pm AEST
Online via Zoom with closed captioning, Auslan on request
Book here

Also if you’re an arts critic or editor in Australia, you can add yourself to the Critical Mass database I made to help media outlets access a more diverse pool of critics.

Promo graphic with Club Critique in pink all-caps text over a purple background. Emerging Writers' Festival logo and website in green and white at the bottom of the square.
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Finalist for the Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism!

The Walkey Foundation announced their finalists for the 2023 Mid-Year Celebration of Journalism today and I’m shortlisted for the Pascall Prize for Arts Criticism alongside Catriona Menzies-Pike and Christopher Allen! How thrilling!

The piece that’s nominated is my review of Chinese theatremaker Wang Chong’s solo show at the Malthouse, Made in China 2.0. So many great critics have won this prize in past years, including Anwen Crawford, Jeff Sparrow, Sarah Krasnostein, and my editor for this piece and so many others, Alison Croggon. It feels like an unthinkable privilege just to write criticism at all, let alone get recognised for it, so I’m really startled, chuffed, blushing, beaming.

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Workshop series: The Drop-In

Solicited advice for trans & gender diverse folks starting out in the creative industries.

Illustration of a cluttered bedroom with text (as below) on an easel.
Poster art: Dawn Iris Dangkomen.

All through May 2022, I’m running five online workshops for trans/nonbinary/gender diverse folks on starting out in the creative industries, featuring an all-star line up:

  • Sun 8 May – dance – Raina Peterson (they/them) – book
  • Tue 10 May – writing/editing – Maddee Clark (he/him) – book
  • Tue 17 May – media – Jinghua Qian (ey/em) – book
  • Tue 24 May – music – June Jones (she/her) – book
  • Tue 31 May – comedy – Cassie Workman (she/her) – book

They’re all free, you can join from anywhere in the world, and you can come to as few or as many as you like. More info at the booking links above. Can’t wait!

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n-SCRIBE 15

Hot off the press! n-SCRIBE 15 is an anthology of 40 works by Darebin writers and artists (including cover artist Tama Sharman) that you can pick up in Darebin libraries, cafes and bookstores for free.

n-SCRIBE 15, published 24 February 2022. Cover art: Tama Sharman.
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