Fassih Keiso was born 1956 in Syria and has lived and worked in Melbourne since 1993. He describes the influence of having lived in both countries for significant amounts of time as informing the cross-cultural themes characterizing his interdisciplinary practice. His work employs various media from painting to photography, performance, video, and installation. Each work is governed by a central idea that usually links Arabic contemporary life, culture, and politics with broader global issues.photography, cross-cultural, arabic contemporary life

Sha Sarwari is a multidisciplinary artist who works in sculpture, installation, photography, and performance. A Moth to a Flame is a commentary on the often-tragic dilemma that refugees encounter when escaping their country of origin to seek asylum. This piece comes from a series of works, also titled A Moth to a Flame, where this metaphor is used to show how the hopefulness of a new life can result in a dangerous, sometimes fatal illusion. In this work, Sawari aims to give a voice to the refugee experience, to reconcile cultural identity, new belonging and resilience in the face of trauma.

The Kew Recreation Hall was opened in 1880. For eighty years it was a major venue for concerts, performances, dances and civic events. It was demolished in 1960.This is an historically and culturally significant municipal photograph from Kew dating from 1906. The photograph has architectural significance as it is the only known, authenticated photograph of the interior of the Recreation Hall in Wellington Street before it was renovated. The Recreation Hall was of statewide significance as a centre of social activity in Kew from 1880-1960. The Mayor (Cr T.G. Jellis) and the Mayoress in the audience at a mayoral concert in the Kew Recreation Hall in Wellington Street. [Inscription on mount] "Mayoral Concert, Recreation Hall, Kew, 31st July 1906. Cr. T. G. Jellis Mayor." [Plaque] "Presented by Mayor T.G. Jellis, Mayor 1905-6"cr. t.g. jellis, mayors of kew, kew recreation hall (interior)

A4 size Mayoral report including Councillor and Executive officer information, organisational structure, economic development, planning, family and leisure services. No mention of arts or cultural services. non-fictionFinancial and civic report.mayor morley, mayoress morley, councillor p. r. morley

This work is from a series centred around the Chinese proverb “to hold a book in one’s hand is to hold a house of gold” in which the artist positions himself within sites of colonial power. Set within the National Wool Museum gallery, the artist references the pose of an exhausted shearer after a long day of arduous labour. However he is reclining while reading The Fire Stick by Wulla Merrii, a novel set against the 1891 Queensland Shearer’s Strike, questioning cultural stereotypes and how they pertain to concepts of work and leisure. Dressed in sub fusc, his official uniform as an Oxford scholar, Thompson is a defiant intellectual challenging past and continued misperceptions of First Nations people, while embracing both the intersections of his identity and his ancestral heritage. Dr Christian Thompson AO is a Bidjara man of the Kunja Nation with Irish and Chinese heritage. His practice spans across video, photography, sculpture, textiles, performance and sound, evolving through a process of auto – ethnography. While employing various modes of research, he connects his own experience to larger social, political, cultural meanings and understandings. His doctoral research and art practice has had a critical impact on International and Australian art, making global history as one of the first Australian Indigenous students at Oxford University. In 2018 he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia for distinguished services to the visual arts and as a role model to young indigenous artists in the Queen’s Birthday honours list.Framed photograph showing a man dressed in an academic gown, laying on their back holding a book. The setting is a reconstructed shearing shed, inside the galleries of the National Wool Museum.dr christian thompson, first nations, artwork, photography, oxford, heritage, national wool museum

Her Majesty’s has been a central part of the cultural life of Ballarat since it first opened its doors in 1875. Australia’s best preserved theatre building, it has been continuously used as Ballarat’s home of live performance ever since. It has been owned and operated by the City of Ballarat since 1987 and functions as Ballarat’s premier performing arts centre. The Theatre was first known as the Academy of Music, a name calculated to overcome religious and temperance scruples against patronising a “theatre.” The Academy had a flat floored auditorium suitable for dances and dinners, and a fully equipped stage. It was built to supersede Ballarat’s Theatre Royal (1858), which stood around the corner in Sturt Street, near where the Myer Department store sits today. While very grand, the Royal had become outdated and no longer met the technical requirements of the touring companies. The Academy was built by the wealthy Clarke family at the initiative of a group of local people who felt that Ballarat, as the premier city of the Victorian goldfields, should have a theatre worthy of its status. They guaranteed to rent it from the Clarkes at 10% of the construction cost, which was £13,000. The building of Ballarat’s handsome new theatre was supervised by Clarke’s architect, George “Diamond” Browne. It was ready ahead of schedule, and opened on 7th June 1875. The first production was a comic opera by the French composer Lecocq, “La Fille de Madame Angot,” presented by the Royal Opera Bouffe Company run by W. S. Lyster, Australia’s first opera impresario. Soon after the Academy opened, the large Supper Room above Lydiard Street was leased to William Bridges, a former miner, who ran it as an art gallery, displaying an excellent collection of European and Australian artworks, including his own tapestries. After Bridges moved his operations to Melbourne in 1883, the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery was formed. The Gallery Society ran the Gallery from the Academy from 1884 until 1890, when the present Art Gallery in Lydiard Street North was opened.Colour photograph of interior detail at Her Majesty's Theatre, Ballarat.her majesty's ballarat, theatre, performing arts, her majesty's theatre, academy of music, george browne